Bronze Pendants and jewelry charms are here at last! We have been working hard on this new, affordable line for many months and we are so excited that it has finally started to arrive. We currently have in stock our natural bronze, in a beautiful warm finish that is slightly deeper in color than brass, as well as silver plated bronze. In a few weeks, we will also have gold plated bronze in stock. We are using the same reliable 40 micro-inches of plating over the bronze that we currently use on our vermeil style gold plate over sterling silver.
Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin whose discovery heralded a new era in material culture, hence the “Bronze Age”. Bronze is significantly harder than copper which made it particularly well suited to weapons production but it was also used extensively to make jewelry. Dates for the Bronze Age varied by region. It had always been assumed that the Bronze Age began in Greece, Egypt and China, but recent controversial discoveries have placed bronze production in Thailand as early as 4,500BCE, over 1,000 years earlier than other regions! That places our Thai bronze pendants in a long tradition of bronze casting.
Indonesia also has an ancient tradition of bronze casting. In addition to jewelry and artifacts, bronze drums were produced throughout Southeast Asia around 300BCE. The largest known drum, The Moon of Pejeng, still sits in a village temple in Bali. I had a chance to see it about 20 years ago. It is a beautiful specimen of ancient metallurgy. As they do with almost everything, the Balinese have several entertaining myths about this drum. This one is my favorite:
“There were once thirteen and not twelve moons in the sky. One day, one of them fell to earth and got caught in the branches of a tree. Its light was so bright that thieves were forced to stop their nocturnal work and had to discuss how to extinguish the disturbing light. The most unscrupulous of them finally climbed up the tree and urinated on the moon until it burst and fell to the ground in the shape of gong.” (From The Art And Culture of Bali by Urs Ramseyer)
Moon of Pejeng
Bronze Pendants
Silver plated charms
