The Lyresnake's Eye

Description

Lyre snakes are lovely little snakes that like to hunt at night and are especially fond of bats, unfortunately. (We need our bats to eat the bugs. Recently a pair of them have been hanging out {literally} under the vigas of our front portal.) Anyway, lyre snakes have these great big eyes with slit pupils that look like cat's eyes, and this coin ring reminded me of them.

I've noticed that I don't tend to make a lot of small rings since few people who have small, delicate fingers tend to want to wear rings of the size I typically make. But just in case there is someone out there, here's one. It's mostly sterling silver; the riveted band was hammered on a piece of old miner's railroad track from Cerillos, New Mexico, and the outer bezel was hammered on a smooth desert stone.

The big vintage coin at the base of the stack is made of bronze, and is a mid-20th century Queen Elizabeth penny from Nigeria. It's heavily worn and patinaed. Atop that is a half-penny made of nickel from neighboring British West Africa, bearing the name of George VI. I didn't note the date, but it's from the late '30s to mid '50s. I'm still trying to figure out what the arabic inscription says.

On the coins is a nice stack of a piece of RR-hammered bronze, a small, curved piece of rock-hammered sterling, one of my fine silver handmade beads, crackled and aged, and then the topside of the sterling rivet that holds the whole thing together.

As always, very sturdy, very wearable!

Size: 6 3/4" The bezel measures 1 5/8" x 1 1/4".

Care: None needed, but you can buff up the silver with a soft cloth. No polish, please, but it's fine to wash it.

The Lyresnake's Eye will arrive gift-wrapped in a hand-decorated box, along with a handwritten descriptive label.

Added on Sep 14, 2009