Liv Fanselow
My Jens Hansen is a Danish “mourning ring”; a silver ring with a big silver dome. It’s beautiful.
The tradition with a mourning ring is that when the mother dies, she passes it on to the eldest daughter. In my family, it was my great grandmother Olive Field who had a mourning ring.She didn’t have any daughters, so my mum inherited it.
I had heard about the ring, but I didn’t know the details, and then when my Grandmother died, I was given it. It was bitter-sweet. It was a beautiful thing, what it signified, but it was upsetting too. When I wore it to the funeral it made me think about what had been before and what it represented, being a Field. I like the tradition of the mourning ring, because when I wear it, I feel a bit closer to my family; it reminds me of my grandmother and my great
grandmother.
I never met Olive. She passed away before I was born. The thing my mum always says about her is that she was very, very stylish and very, very mischievous. She wore amazing clothes that mum would borrow. These clothes would make all her friends jealous and they wouldn’t believe that they were her grandmother’s.
Mum has also given me some Jens Hansen earrings that were hers. The design is a bit like a ginkgo leaf, but more abstract. They hook through the ears in an unconventional way. They don’t hang like normal earrings. They kind of sit out and make a statement. When I think of Jens Hansen jewellery, I think of beautiful jewellery that’s made with love and thought. That’s what Jens Hansen represents for me.