The Tree of Life

Reclaimed Sterling Silver Florin Necklace

A Canon Piece of the Hairy Growler Collection

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Where roots meet memory

Some symbols belong to no single culture because they belong to everyone.

The Tree of Life has appeared wherever people have tried to understand their place in the world — carved into stone, woven into myth, and carried as a reminder that life moves in cycles rather than straight lines.

This pendant continues that ancient language.

Handcrafted from a recycled sterling silver Florin coin struck more than a century ago, the piece begins not with new material but with history already lived. Once currency moving quietly through everyday exchange, the silver is preserved rather than melted, allowing its story to continue in another form.

Here, the coin becomes a living symbol.

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The World Tree

Across traditions, the Tree of Life represents connection:

• roots anchored in the earth

• branches reaching toward the unseen

• life unfolding between the physical and spiritual realms

It speaks of ancestry, growth, resilience, and continuity across generations — a symbol often chosen to mark milestones, relationships, and turning points in life.

Within the Hairy Growler world, the tree stands at the centre of the woodland mythology: the still point from which many stories grow.

Where the hare moves and the owl observes, the tree endures.

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A Canon of the Hairy Growler World

Certain works quietly define a collection.

The Tree of Life is one of them.

It gathers together the essential principles of the workshop:

• reclaimed historic silver

• mythology rooted in landscape

• traditional hand processes

• meaning revealed through making rather than decoration

Many later pieces — animals, moons, and symbolic forms — grow outward from this idea of continuity.

The tree is not simply part of the collection.

It explains it.

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Made Slowly at the Bench

Each pendant begins as an unwanted sterling silver Florin coin, carefully flattened to create a working surface before the design is freehand drawn directly onto the metal.

The tree is then:

• hand cut using a traditional jeweller’s piercing saw

• carved and engraved with chisels and hand tools

• finished to preserve both detail and character of the original coin

Every bark line and leaf is individually engraved, allowing subtle variation between pieces. No casting mould exists; each tree is shaped anew.

Signs of the coin’s earlier life remain intentionally — quiet traces of time carried forward.

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Silver That Has Already Lived

The choice to recycle historic coins is not aesthetic alone.

Rather than mining new silver, existing metal is given renewed purpose — preserving history while creating something contemporary and wearable.

The result is jewellery that feels both ancient and present at once.

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A Note from the Woodland

In Hairy Growler folklore, the tree represents continuity — roots holding memory while branches reach toward futures not yet known. Every piece connected to the tree carries part of that same unfolding story.

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Specifications

• Material: Recycled sterling silver Florin (two-shilling coin)

• Technique: Hand cut, carved & engraved using traditional tools

• Size: Approx. 35 mm diameter

• Detail: Optional engraved initial on reverse

• Catch: Hairy Growler shepherd’s crook clasp in sterling silver

• Origin: Handmade in Cambridge, England

• Each piece: Individually handcrafted and unique

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Time Horizon

Once exchanged as currency in another century, this silver now lives differently — worn close, gathering meaning with each passing year, slowly becoming part of another family’s story.

Once, this metal moved endlessly through the world without being noticed.

At the bench it was given stillness, shaped into a symbol older than memory itself. Now the tree grows again — no longer spent, but kept — carrying past and future together.

And the roots deepen still.

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Canon Note

The Tree of Life has come to sit at the heart of the Hairy Growler collection — a returning symbol through which many other works find their origin.