Description
Inspiration for my Frog and Lilypad Earrings
Some of my earliest sketchings, when I was a child, were of frogs. They always make me smile. So when I began silversmithing, I was itching to sculpt the archetypal common frog sitting on a lilypad. Having been initially wooed by the seductiveness of the Red-Eyed Tree Frog, I was brought back to my original love when asked to create a “Lucky Frog”, based on the common frog, from which these Frog and Lilypad Earrings were born. Here is the story:
I met a lady, in Belgium, called Anna, who asked me to make a miniature common frog for her daughter. She had been given a small frog long ago, during a visit to Japan. The person who gave it to her explained about the Japanese Lucky Frog: “Frog” and “Return” being the same word in Japanese, travellers are often given a Lucky Frog to safeguard their return home. A variation to this is putting a little frog in your wallet and, as superstition would have it, the little frog ensures that any money leaving the wallet will eventually find its way back again. She has carried that little frog, now barely recognisable, in her wallet now for more than 30 years – and my miniature model of the common frog means that her daughter is now able to carry on that tradition.
Of course, once finished, I couldn’t resist making them into earrings, with matching lilypads of course!