Tuesday, October 26, 2010

close to my heart





I have to admit, I'm a sucker for lockets. Have been for some time. My mother gave me my first real locket as a college graduation gift. There is just something so personal and so intimate about them.  What better way to keep a memory of someone close to you?  Even if you don't fill it (which I often admittedly don't)... the space is there... and somehow you know how you would allocate it. And that is nearly as just meaningful.  

I was curious as to the origin of lockets and wanted to see if there was something outside the obvious, and there wasn't really, but I thought I'd share some of what I found here. And then I wanted to assure you that our zuzu girl handmade lockets are most definitely poison free!

..."In times past a locket was used to carry around small things that had some value to the wearer. Medicine could be kept inside them as well as poison. Ancient times could be very dangerous to live in and the act of poisoning someone who was a threat to you was often a means of disposing of them. It was a lot more common than you might think. Lockets were also used by those who held certain beliefs in herbs and like charms to ward off evil and sickness. The hair or ashes of loved ones was often kept inside a locket as one of many items kept as a keepsake.

Lockets were often used to put a miniature hand painted picture inside. These tiny images of the person inside were very tedious work, but done by an expert artist the result was a beautiful work of art. In the past hundred years or so is when the most popular use for lockets developed so to speak. Placing photographed pictures inside them became their most common use and photos could be had by almost anyone...."