My sister, My Friend through Thick and Thin Necklace

An inspirational message

repeated ad infinitum. But how?

Begin reading and you will return to

where you began, as if by magic.

Through thick and thin, now meaning through

difficult times and easy times, is an expression

at least as old as Geoffrey Chaucer’s

Canterbury Tales [c. 1380] where it appears in

the Reeve’s Tale. It’s meaning remains

remarkably unchanged throughout the

centuries, appearing again in Edmund

Spenser’s The Faerie Queene in 1590:

His

 

tyreling Jade he fiersely froth did push, Through

Thicke and thin, both over banck and bush

 

Engraved jewelry of this kind is called poesy

jewelry, a

poesy being a short poem, often an

 

expression of love, friendship or inspiration,

engraved onto a ring or pendant. Most

popular as rings, engraved poesy bands were

highly fashionable in England and France in

the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,

though many earlier examples exist. Their

frequent mention in Shakespeare’s plays attest

to their popularity.

This extraordinary necklace moves the

tradition of poesy jewelry into the twenty first

century, in its sophisticated shape and highly

technical degree of craftsmanship

The geometric form of this pendant is known

as a Möbius strip, after the German

mathematician August Ferdinand Möbius

[1790-1868].

It represents the seeming paradox of a plane

without end, or one of infinite length. As such

it became an accepted symbol for infinity; an

appropriate and symbolic form for this

message where the band appears to grow

wider and narrower, yet in fact remains

constant.

The circlet will move about the chain when

worn, constantly changing its appearance.

Creating one shape, then another. The more

one observes its seeming simplicity, the more

complex it becomes. The message remains

constant, the form never rests.