‘I love reusing something that’s just sitting there, collecting dust,’ says jeweller Rachel Eardley. A rather spectacular form of coin circulation, her work involves piecing together motifs cut from coins, then melding them into tiny, wearable metal collages. Elegant, intricate and playful, with just a hint of the Jack Sparrow, her pieces include earrings laced with ships cut from 1940s South African coins, or lilies and thistles carved from sixpences and old fivepences.
Part of the appeal of using coins (she’sgot here?” Coins have a history and stories to tell – I love thinking about the different hands they’ve passed through, the different things they’ve been used to pay for.’
