Regional Stock Reports

Mens Celtic Rings With Knot Pattern Are Almost Always Favored

Celtic engagement rings and mens celtic rings seem to have been in demand for over a 1000 years. These early people were a race living almost everywhere in Europe along with the north of Scotland and Orkney where these people were called Picts. The Celts’ endless pattern or knot design means unceasing love, which explains why our own Celtic engagement rings are enduringly favored today.

The knot styles are visible on carved stones, designs in sacred books, on jewelled weapons and on the jewelry that’s been discovered in hoards and graves. Torcs (neck rings) and finger and toe rings were frequently worn and men normally wore signet rings. They were made from gold, silver, copper, tin, bronze and iron. Sometimes these were emblazoned with enamel, amber or gemstones. The British Museum has got a ring dating from the Celtic period made from deer antler. This indicates that it was not only the well-off and ruling classes who adorned themselves with jewelry.

Brooches were chosen by Celts to secure cloaks at the shoulder for men or on the breast for women. Orkney jewelers supply many brooches with well-known Celtic patterns within their ranges, which includes the wonderful Kells brooch, based on the gospel books in Ireland. The Londesborough Brooch is a silver and gold 8th to 9th century brooch from Ireland, devised for someone of privilege and influence, possibly a senior clergyman. Its design and style is uncommon in that all its fine design is cast and no filigree was applied. It’s really a heavy duty silver ring cast with multifaceted designs of wildlife and bird motifs and after that heavily gilded on the front side with amber embellishment.

Celtic Engagement Rings Have Universal Charm

Further clues to Celtic silver were found in a hoard uncovered in 1840 around the Broch of Burgar in Evie, mainland Orkney. Even though the hoard was reported to the authorities it vanished and was forgotten permanently and was perhaps melted down and sold off. It incorporated pins, brooches, silver combs and chains. The St Ninian’s Hoard was discovered on St Ninian’s Isle in Shetland in 1958 and includes 12 silver brooches.

If you happen to buy Celtic engagement rings you are getting an item of revival art which may be appreciated by your children and grandchildren. It is believed that women donned betrothal rings while men did not in ancient times. Certainly the grade of the work, like that of numerous Orkney’s hand-crafted designs, is of such a very high standard that they’re still appreciated and replicated these days.

Things like Celtic engagement rings are really preferred, but if your preference is for something more modern-day, you will discover plenty to see if you click here.

Fresh New Contemporary Jewelry Expands

Handmade earrings form a section of striking product lines which offer a harmonized look to your jewellery. Many themes have got a variety of styles within collections too. You can match up stud or drop style handmade earrings with brooches and necklaces.

One of Orkney’s most well-liked contemporary jewelry designs is the Happy Valley collection. This evokes the traditional themes cherished by some of the great British pottery creators in the 1920s and 1930s. In Orkney, Happy Valley is a quiet glen full of flowers, trees and scrubs, which had been maintained over quite a few years by a lone crofter.

The crofter, the late Edwin Harrold, was living in a really modest little home with no a source of electricity or mains water. This had been protected from storms below a hillside in a miniature glen. He lovingly developed a small eden which blossoms with bluebells and also other woodland flowers and riverside plants by a tumbling river.

His landscape gardening know-how produced the addition of stone highlights and pathways. This tucked away gem, now an open public nature reserve, is still frequented by lots of Orkney people and travelers who find out about the virtually secret garden. The location is much loved as woods and shelter like that are infrequently found in the islands.

Eye-catching Handmade Earrings in Two Variations

Since Edwin Harrold passed away in 2005, his tiny croft is little by little decaying. The chimneys and roof are in danger of falling down. This month the news was declared that a grant will be provided to the Friends of Happy Valley through the Scapa Flow Landscape Partnership Scheme and so the cottage will be preserved. The objective is to help make the building structurally sound - wind and water tight - as opposed to restore it and remove some of its characteristics.

Archaeologists appear to have been piecing together the several stages of the small home. A different mission will capture the oral background of Happy Valley by writing down the stories and recollections of local people. The Friends also have planted numerous other trees since Mr Harrold’s death and are arranging a plan for the complete site.

The Happy Valley jewelry theme has been a firm favorite with our www.olagoriejewellery.com jewelry designers over decades. There are usually 2 forms of handmade earrings and these along with the brooches and pendants can be created in gold or silver. Some jewelers could possibly have Happy Valley items in stock that could be purchased just in time for Xmas gifts.

Ready to mix and match? Click here to discover our striking array of Celtic and Norse-inspired jewellery, or find out more about our contemporary jewelry if you are into more modern designs.

Most UK Jewellery Shops Are No Match For Orkney’s Jewelers

Silver bangles made here in Orkney remember our links with Norse history. Two important Christmas presents have come to Orkney to commemorate a relationship between local communities which has bonded these islands with Norway since the Viking Age. Every year the folks of Hordaland provide us with Christmas trees to stand outside and inside St Magnus Cathedral. Silver bangles and anklet bracelets featuring St Magnus’ window sell very well in the UK and overseas.

While London, Edinburgh and New York each are given a Christmas tree from Norway; Orkney is gifted a pair. The tree that was lit outside of the cathedral on Saturday was provided by the county of Hordaland, that’s been twinned with Orkney Islands Council for 26 years, although the more compact tree placed within the cathedral is from the people of Grimstad, that has a special link with Orkney’s history.

Viking earls St Magnus and his nephew Kale Kolssn, (born 1100) known later as Earl Rognvald the creator of St Magnus Cathedral , spent their youth as boys on the farm Bringsvrd at Grimstad in southern Norway, now in the district of Aust-Agder. It is in this forest that the tree destined for Orkney is felled.

Kale was born at the huge farm where his father Kol Kalessn was the king’s spokesperson. He was married to Magnus’ sister Gunhild and became Earl Rognvald in Orkney on the martyrdom of his uncle Magnus. He created the cathedral to honour his uncle.

In Grimstad the Fjre Kirke (church) on the farm is linked to St Magnus Cathedral though the current natural stone church built around 1150 by local area farmers upgraded the hardwood church that Magnus and Kale were familiar with. In 1987 the 850th anniversary of the founding of St Magnus Cathedral was denoted when the society sent a plaque and a tree to Kirkwall. And that is exactly the way the tree giving tradition started. Both church buildings were once in the Norwegian diocese of Trondheim.

Silver Bangles Open a Window on History

Grimstad has a population of nearly 20,000, much like the total number of inhabitants of Orkney, and is a maritime township set amidst many little islands. A well-known son of Grimstad was the playwright Henrik Ibsen. Writer Roald Dahl went to visit his grandparents there and novelist Knut Hamsun had been a native of the township.

In the cathedral a Christmas service, which normally has standing room only provides carols and music from school choir and pipers of Orkney and music players from Norway. Above them is the Rose window that’s shown on Silver bangles from our website.

If silver bangles are not your style then certainly several of the other pieces of fine jewellery on our www.olagoriejewellery.com internet site will please you. For other items with a Norse inspiration just click here.

Handcrafted Jewellery for Holiday Gifts

This really is a busy time of the year for retailers in the lead up to Christmas day but Orkney jewelers are presently taking orders for engagement rings in addition to other non-festive handcrafted jewellery. After all, some people may well be intending to pop the question beneath the mistletoe or next to the Xmas tree. And gift-wrapped contemporary engagement rings might be just what is required, why don’t you check out our website at www.olagoriejewellery.com and discover the huge variety of Scottish and Norse jewellery being offered.

Strong gales hit Orkney a few weeks ago and this week they’ve been especially bad. Wind gusts of 130mph were noted at a wind powered generator on the outskirts of Kirkwall and one of the town’s streets along side the shore needed to be closed. Some bold (foolhardy?) souls were seen battling along close to the sea wall in a spirit of adventure, despite dire warnings by the coastguard. One may ask if they expect to be rescued if they should be swept out to sea!

Among Orkney’s outlying islands, South Walls, which is joined to Hoy by a shingle bank or ayre which has a road on the top, was totally cut off last night when big pieces of the road were blown off it. The coastguard found it necessary to mount an all-night vigil to stop drivers from attempting to cross.

Today the local authority attempted to repair the highway but the weather conditions were too unsafe. And they intended to operate a foot ferryboat but the storms were too intense. Tonight blizzards and hailstorms continue unabated.

Contemporary Engagement Rings Are Being Created

Even so, you don’t have to feel too sad for the 200 home owners of South Walls. They have got several inns with bars and a retail outlet - while the men and women over the ayre in North Walls and Hoy have no such creature comforts. They have fishing boats to mainland Orkney, but a lot of these were postponed over the past few stormy days.

The good thing about Orkney is the fact that across the millennia we have become wise to the way to handle the wind, in many ways that men and women in more mild climates to the south don’t really need to. That is certainly why whenever we get hurricane force winds every item has been secured and we don’t get much damage, relative to the destruction caused in southerly regions. As one Orkney resident said today: “Anything that was gonna blow away, blew away 10 years ago.”

This simply leaves Orkney jewellery designers free to continue on creating their contemporary engagement rings together with other items of fine jewellery without concern which your roof will take off or anything might be thrown through the window. Quite comforting really.

Never mind the wild weather, click here in order to avoid all of that and go shopping in the convenience of your home. Our www.olagoriejewellery.com website provides an extensive range of unusual jewellery that’s handcrafted, rather than just machine-produced in China or India.

What About Picking Contemporary Jewelry From An ATM?

The most recent jewellery news articles reveal that online jewellery shopping has advanced another step. A gold ATM machine is now retailing contemporary jewellery and gold coins - in India. But while a great many folk have learned how to have faith in online jewellery shopping, buying from a machine has not proved as popular as internet or over-the-counter purchases by those who know their products.

India’s first ATM machine has proved to be a conversation piece but buyers take pleasure in the experience of conversing with an actual sales representative. And viewing valuable jewellery items on the web is the next best thing.

Loads of gold is sold throughout the large country of India with well over 900 tonnes of gold bullion changing hands. Therefore, if machine-sold gold and jewelry isn’t hitting the jackpot there, it is very unlikely that an ATM dispensing glistening jewels would flourish in the United Kingdom. It most certainly wouldn’t be popular in the rather conservative Orkney Islands - people here love to shop locally online at http://www.olagoriejewellery.com.

But the machine’s owner is hopeful with regard to the new device for jewellery buyers. “There is investment purchase in this machine, there is gifting in the machine plus there is self-indulgence,” says Sanjeev Agarwal, chief executive of Gitanjali Exports, which is the creator of the machine. “On day one of the launch earlier this year we got some 28 purchases.”

The automatic dispenser dishes out diamond jewellery while the smallest gold coin being offered weighs a gram and costs the equivalent of 40. The touchscreen technology offers quick gratification but could result in impulsive buys, we fear.

Gitanjali expects the electronic teller units, besides being far cheaper to run than the usual store, will allow the company to attain a wider base of shoppers and present a convenient technique to buy in a country that’s adopting today’s technology rapidly. The stand alone prototype golden box, slightly taller and wider than the usual regular cash ATM, stands adjacent to the entrance of a busy Indian shopping center, constructed so it is secure and safe against drills and protected by surveillance cameras.

A Workable Alternative to Online Jewellery Shopping?

Customers use a touchscreen to navigate the goods that are available and can pay with either a credit card or cash. Agarwal argues that folks were wary of ATM cash machines at the time they were generally available but are now very happy to use them and this is just how his new clients will interact with these machines, in the future.

He hopes to roll out 75 of the automated machines within the next 3 years, in airports, shopping centers and at faith based sites. We wonder if people within the Northern Isles would decide to try buying Orkney jewellery dispensed from an ATM outside St Magnus Cathedral. We suspect online jewellery shopping and buying over the counter will remain the most popular options here! Why not start by checking out some of our traditional Scottish jewellery at http://www.olagoriejewellery.com/range.php?id=5.

Forget ATMs - there isn’t anything to beat the convenience of online jewellery shopping, Go and visit our website for a huge range of unconventional and cultural designs, or if you’re keen on contemporary jewellery try http://www.olagoriejewellery.com/range.php?id=1.