Tag Archives: jewelry

Grandma’s Earrings & Brooch

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA

“When my grandma passed away, the two things that I got from her were a pair of ladybug earrings and a butterfly brooch. So I started as a tradition wearing one of these items. Anytime I had a big presentation, anytime I had a big event, anytime I went to a family event where my grandpa was going to be there, as a way to invite her. I don’t know. It just felt like if I was wearing one of those, she was with me and she was able to see what I was doing and still keep up, even though she wasn’t alive. It definitely got to the point where times when I was like ‘oh, i don’t really want to wear either of these. They don’t go with my outfit’ but I’m not going to say that grandma can’t come to Christmas dinner. So you wear the brooch or you wear the earrings so that grandmas with you.’ I do that for a lot of things.”

Do you also view them as good luck charms in a way?

“Oh, definitely yeah. I mean it’s just like having someone on your side/ I mean, I don’t think it physically brings me good luck. Even though I know butterflies are signs of hope and I know ladybugs are signs of luck, I don’t view it very strictly in that way. It’s supposed to be my grandma and she’s going to help me get through it.”

Did you start doing this on your own?

“Yeah, I started a couple months after, so I’ve been doing it for about nineish years now.”

Analysis: After the death of close relatives, especially grandparents, we receive family heirlooms or some sort of memorabilia from their lives. Particularly with jewlery, we tend to inscribe intense meanings onto these items, feeling that they are a connection to the person’s spirit. Wearing their jewelry is like carrying them with us, just as the informant described. By having her grandmother with her, the informant has the confidence to face stressful events as well as accompanying her at family gatherings. The informant specified that she feels an obligation to wear the items around her grandfather since he had lost his wife. In a way, this creates a special bond with her grandfather who sees his granddaughter carrying a piece of his wife as she lives through her. This is one of the many ways of coping and supporting family members in their losses of loved ones.

Evil Eye

Main Piece. 

Informant: Yeah so in Turkey the evil eye, which is called I’m blanking on the name, it’ll come back to me. But it’s like yeah, it’s a form of protection. It protects you from you know, the evil but like more specific cases like if someone is like bad-mouthing you like talking behind your back that people in Turkey believe that if you have like an evil eye in your house or in your car or anything like it’ll protect you from-from things like that. You know it comes in different colors. It’s it’s-it’s supposed to be hung. Yeah, like in your car. People have bracelets rings they get tattoos of it. But in your home a lot of like Turkish like bazaars like the markets. They will hang it so they make like they put them in like birdhouses to like they put the evil eye design in like different like domestic objects, so that you can hang it it always has to be hanging that’s that’s something I mean, I guess like via tattoo then. I don’t know how that counts. But but in terms of like the jewelry or like the object itself, it has to be hanging because it like hangs like over you. So you want to hang it like above a door or like the entrance to your home like you walk in and it’s right there. 

Informants Relationship to the Piece. 

My informant was taught this by her parents and recalled a story of the time her mother had given her an evil eye for her car. 

Informant: When I first got my license, I was going to drive for the first time by myself in a car. She had me hang an evil eye chain on the front mirror as like protection and then when I got in a car accident, she actually was like ‘It’s because that was in your car and it protected you’, because I didn’t have any injuries. And it’s really crazy how people believe it. But my mom believes in it very much so and because of that, it’s like yeah, it’s really been passed on to me where I have one hanging right there (she points to her wall where she has a small evil eye chain-hung”

Context: 

The informant is one of my friends, a 20-year-old Turkish-American theatre major at the University of Southern California. I was told this as we were hanging out in her room after I asked her about some superstitions she believes in. 

Analysis:

I definitely grew up seeing a lot of my friends wear an evil eye and seeing vendors who sold jewelry that contained the symbol, but I never really knew what it meant, other than being a pretty symbol. I think it’s interesting how the main purpose of the evil eye is to protect you from people bad-mouthing you behind your back, but for my informants’ family it’s become a catch-all symbol for protection, especially for their children as they begin to leave the house and become more independent, the evil eye becomes a way for the parents to keep an “eye” on their children.

Family/Life Cycle Tradition

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: LA
Performance Date: 4/9/18
Primary Language: English

 

I asked one of my roommates Kyle if there was anything that he could think of in the theme of things being passed down in his family. He immediately mentioned something that has been going on in his family for a long time

 

Kyle said that, “The oldest living male in the family gets my great-great grandfather’s gold pocket watch. When the person who has it passes away, the next male gets it. My grandpa has it right now, so when he dies my father will get it, and when he dies I will get the pocket watch. Its something that will continue to be a tradition in my family”

 

 

Background Info: Kyle said that this is a tradition started by his great-great grandfather who wanted to keep something special going along the life cycle of the male generations of the Messinger family. It is a small gold pocket watch that his great-great grandfather would always carry around since he was a child. Kyle thinks this is a very special tradition in his family and knows how important it is to keep the legacy going when it comes his time to own the watch.

 

Context: Kyle told me about this during dinner at our fraternity house.

 

Analysis: I think this is a very cool tradition in Kyle’s family. It reminds me of something that is done on my Mom’s side of the family—similar thing except it is a necklace that my grandmother wears that was given to her by her mother. I think having a family life cycle type tradition like this is very important to have.

Lucky Bracelet

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: College Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 10, 2018
Primary Language: English
Language: n/a

“I had this bracelet that I got from a gas station, and it had a little four-leaf clover, and for some reason – well, I was really young when I did archery, like 10 – I was like, ‘This is good luck, and if I ever don’t compete in it, then I’ll lose,’ and, for some reason, every time before I’d shoot I’d rub it once and them pull my bow back. [The superstition] was so strong. I was like, ‘this is my good luck charm,’ but [the competitions] were small. Well, it was a state competition, but there weren’t that many archers at the time, and so I kept winning – I guess I was good at it but whatever – and I was so convinced. One day I lost it, and I was like, ‘oh my god,’ I was so stressed, and that was that.”

Background Information and Context:

“I guess I picked it up because the four-leaf clover is supposed to be lucky, but it being in the bracelet in my favorite color and being the only one at the store, it felt like fate (she said the word in a mocking tone).” As the informant said above, she bought the bracelet at a gas station while on a road trip, and the ritual of rubbing it was done while competing in archery, just before shooting. I had asked her to share another pre-competition ritual to follow up one about cheerleading that she’d shared in a prior interview.

Collector’s Note:

Athletes and competitors having tokens of good luck is certainly nothing out of the ordinary, but I found it interesting that the informant kept pointing out how illogical the idea was (e.g. by using a mocking tone or adding “for some reason”). Tokens of good luck are so interesting because the power they hold lies largely in the owner’s beliefs and personal associations with the object, and suggesting that the object is mundane can be a huge insult. It is also interesting to note how symbols travel. Although the symbolism of the four-leaf clover comes from folk tradition to which the informant does not have a personal or inherited connection, it has become something of common knowledge.

Kara- A Steel Bracelet worn by Sikhs

Nationality: Indian American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Performance Date: April 24, 2017
Primary Language: English

Informant is a student at USC, and is a practicioner of the Sikh religion.

“The Kara is a plain, completely round steel bracelet worn by all Sikhs to identify themselves to other Sikhs. You receive it right when you are born, and you’re supposed to wear it until you die. Well, I guess that you have to swap it out once it gets too small on you, but that’s besides the point. It is a form of identification so that everyone would know that we were Sikhs, because the Sikhs were known as the protectors of people from the Mughal empire. It is also a charm that protects you from bad spirits, and the circular shape is used to represent and remind us of the infiniteness of God. It is always made of steel so that everybody is equal. Like, the peasants will wear steel karas and the richest people would wear steel karas too, to show that everybody was the same under the eyes of God. So I wear one, and all of my family wears them as well, as a sign that we are Sikhs.”

 

Collector’s Comments:

This is a very good example of jewelry that is worn for religious reasons. This is very interesting to me personally, because I have seen a few people who are Sikhs wearing the same bracelet, but I had not known what the purpose was. It is also very interesting because this is an identifying mark within the Sikh community so that other members can recognize each other, so even today, beyond its religious significance, it serves a functional purpose.