Something I hadn’t blogged about, but have been meaning to for along time. In 2007 Christina and I attended the AGIDEAS conference in Melbourne. Amongst all the modern and funky styley designers was John. W. Thompson, an old man, who reminded me of Kernel Sanders. He got on the microphone, seemed very nervous, had a great English accent and excused himself in advance for having Attention Deficit Disorder!
A lot of the young audience began to leave the auditorium when John started speaking, shame really as they missed out on an amazing presentation.
It turns out that John’s a master hand engraver who still uses the same methods to engrave as were used in the Middle Ages. In the 1960’s, he was the last apprentice in his craft to be taken on anywhere in the United Kingdom. Engraving is in the blood, his ancestor was the famed 18th century Hand Engraver William Hogarth.
He was turned down from some schools as his skills surpassed his lecturers, he was then recommended to work for the royal family. He’s an amazing typographer as well as engraver and designed Prince Charles’ and Princess Di’s wedding invites and ring, he came out to Australia and failed to get work at the Mr. Mint as they use electric engravers (he does it all by hand!) but he eventually started his own little business in the Dymocks building on George St. Sydney.
He more recently did the ring for Lord of the Rings and he’s been passing all of his skills over to his son who will soon take over the business.
That was a calling card for me. All that history, and he was in Sydney! I just had to pay him a visit, and that Christina and I did. He was so happy to greet us once we told him we’d seen him speak at AGIDEAS, apparently we were the only people who gave him feedback on his talk. Whilst most of his work is with gold and white gold he was so keen to help us out with a special little something and we decided on a font, a message (Inter nos perdite amare volumus [We agreed to love each other madly]) and in silver (which he rarely works with).
It was a long wait but we finally got our rings and we’ve never taken them off since! Last night I used my super buffing machine to buff them up and they’ve come alive again :)
