Swearables

This range brought out the playfulness in Rob Morris, in fact, he’s known as The Mischievous Silversmith, and sweary jewellery is solid silver mischief! He was inspired by people’s love of symbols, hieroglyphs and logograms. With a great sense of humour and loving to make people laugh, he’s also a great proponent of profane language… so he began designing wearable swearables – sharp pendants with unique chunky graphics, which are also stylish, but sufficiently cryptic… so as not to raise eyebrows until owners reveal their true meaning! Rob admits he was also keen to take poke fun at people who appropriate spiritual and cultural symbols for their own ego.

The logographic source is evident in some of them… Thunderbirds/Monty Python for the monolithic Boris pendant, hieroglyphs for the Linda, Hanzi for the Fred, Pyu for the Gertrude and so on!

To really make the designs sing out, Rob has oxidised the low spots. This is done by painting oxidising fluid, which artificially ages the silver’s surface. The fluid most commonly employed used to be liver of sulphur, but the smell in the workshop made Rob fearful customers might think he’d stepped on a duck, so he switched to a Swedish product, Platinol, and thankfully the finish is superior, and the colour is richer. Rob then gently polishes the surface to a high shine.

Rob enjoys explaining the Swearable range to people visiting his gallery, most are highly amused and try and guess the profanity they’re looking at, a few are a little startled, but no one has yet been offended, thankfully. Some customers have been up to their own mischief, choosing to wear their cryptic pendants to extremely high-level business meetings… so Rob’s sweary jewellery has made it all the way to the Cabinet Office and The Bank of England!