A Little more detail…
Raven Moon
Pendant Hand Cut from a Silver Sixpence
A Canon Piece of the Hairy Growler Collection
Some birds belong to daylight.
The raven belongs to what remains after.
Before it became a pendant, this piece moved quietly through ordinary life as a silver sixpence — carried, exchanged, handled without ceremony, its small worth measured in passing moments.
Over time, that first life ended.
The coin was no longer needed for exchange.
Its surface softened.
Its purpose changed.
Rather than being melted down and stripped into anonymity, the lucky sixpence was given pause at the bench. The silver was opened by hand, and from within its circle another presence emerged:
a raven beneath the moon,
watched over by stars,
rooted by oak.
The original date remains beneath its feet — a small reminder that this silver entered the world long before it came to rest here.
The Silver Had Already Lived
There is a different kind of beauty in silver that has known time.
A sixpence was never made to be rare. It was made to move through everyday life — from palm to pocket, from shop to street, from one life briefly into another. That movement leaves traces: softened edges, faint marks, the quiet wear that only years can place into metal.
In this pendant, those traces remain.
The coin edge still frames the scene.
The date still anchors it.
The past still speaks through the surface.
It has not been made new.
It has been carried forward.
At the Bench
This pendant is made entirely by hand using traditional jeweller’s techniques.
The sixpence is cut open and worked directly, allowing the circle of the coin to guide the whole composition. The raven is carved feather by feather, the moon shaped with cratered texture, the stars opened into the silver, and the oak leaves drawn upward to hold the lower edges of the scene.
No casting.
No moulds.
No repetition.
Only old silver, hand tools, and the slow revealing of what the metal can hold.
Every cut is permanent.
Every line is intentional.
Every surface retains the presence of the bench.
The Raven
In old stories, the raven is rarely just a bird.
It appears at edges — of woodland and open sky, of weather and stillness, of memory and forgetting. It belongs to places where something has already happened, or is about to.
It is the bird of aftermath and awareness.
Not noisy in spirit, even when loud in voice.
Not decorative, even when beautiful.
A keeper rather than a messenger.
A witness that remembers what others leave behind.
Within the Hairy Growler world, the raven stands apart from the smaller bird lineage. Where blossom birds speak of return, companionship, and gentler continuance, the raven carries older weight.
He keeps memory.
He watches thresholds.
He stands where silver still remembers its first life and waits for the second to begin.
Moon, Stars, and Oak
The raven does not stand alone.
The moon above him marks continuity — the recurring cycle by which time reveals itself not as a straight line, but as return.
The stars suggest guidance, distance, and the quiet geometry of things larger than the wearer.
The oak leaves root the whole scene back into the woodland mythology that runs through Hairy Growler work. Oak is the old strength of the forest: endurance, memory, and deep-rooted life that remains through season after season.
Together they form a small mythic structure:
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raven — memory
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moon — continuity
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stars — guidance
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oak — endurance
This is not simply a pendant of a bird.
It is a night-world held in silver.
A Canon of the Hairy Growler World
Some works come quietly to the centre of a collection.
They gather together its symbols, methods, and deeper concerns without needing to declare themselves.
Raven Moon is one of those works.
It carries the essential Hairy Growler language:
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reclaimed historic silver
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traditional hand cutting and engraving
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folklore rooted in British landscape
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old material transformed without losing memory
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meaning discovered through stillness rather than display
Where the hare seeks beneath the moon, the owl watches in understanding, and the fox moves between paths, the raven remains at the threshold — the darker note in the woodland constellation, the keeper of what time does not erase.
A Note from the Woodland
Within the Hairy Growler world, the raven is the keeper of memory. He appears where stories deepen — not to begin them, but to stand beside what remains when change has already passed through.
Materials
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Silver sixpence
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Hand cut and hand engraved raven, moon, stars, and oak leaf detail
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Sterling silver chain and handmade clasp
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Handmade in England
Each piece is individually shaped. No two are ever exactly alike.
Time Horizon
Once, this silver moved through the world as currency. Now it rests close to the wearer, carrying a quieter form of significance. In time, it will gather another history of its own — not through exchange, but through being worn, kept, and remembered.
Once, this silver passed quietly from hand to hand.
At the bench it was given stillness, reshaped not to erase its past but to continue it. Now the raven stands beneath the moon — watchful, rooted, and made to carry memory forward into another life.
And the night remains.
Canon Note
This piece has come to sit within the deeper bird lineage of the Hairy Growler collection — where silver, woodland symbolism, and the work of remembering meet.
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