Family Jewels
Publication Day! To celebrate the launch of 'The Christmas We Met' I asked some wonderful authors to write a guest post about their favourite piece of jewellery. Over the next few weeks, there will be a new guest post every couple of days, with some beautiful jewels and touching stories which I've loved reading - I hope you do too.
The new novel is about a young jeweller who finds that her grandmother's diamond brooch is the key to her family's secrets. I loved researching the history of jewellery making for this story, and creating a fictional set of family jewels. One of the pieces is an asteria sapphire which disappears during World War 1. Asteria sapphires are highly prized as 'the stone of destiny', and the three bars of the star are associated with faith, hope and destiny in Christian mythology. Throughout history the stone has been worn as a talisman, protector of travellers against the evil eye. Sir Richard Burton wore a famous asteria sapphire during his travels in the Orient, and such was its magical reputation, that even to see the stone was said to bring the viewer good luck.
While I was writing this story, I visited a gem dealer in Thailand, and spent an amazing afternoon talking about all the bright, glittering rubies, emeralds, aquamarines. They had one small star sapphire. It looks like a simple blue-black stone until the light hits it and the star is revealed. It's now a treasured part of our family jewels. Be lucky x
'The Christmas We Met' October 22nd 2015, Orion
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