Mouse in the Brambles Bracelet

Somewhere in a garden in the north of England, a tiny wood mouse is making her way through the brambles right now. She moves between the thorns with the easy familiarity of someone who has always known exactly how to navigate this particular world, pausing here to eat a blackberry, there to collect a seed, occasionally stopping completely still when something above her moves. The bramble lets her through. It was designed to. She has always belonged here.

The Wood Mouse and the Bramble

If you have not yet found your way to Gez Robinson's photography page at Bramble Mouse on Facebook, please go. He has created a small paradise for the wild animals that share his garden in the UK, and he captures moments from their lives with a tenderness and patience that will stop you completely. The tiny wood mouse families that meander in and out of his bramble bushes all day and all night are the heart of it, small creatures going about their small essential lives in a world that Gez has made safe for them, and the joy of watching it is the kind that does not wear off.

The wood mouse is one of the most common small mammals in the British Isles, found in woodland and hedgerows and gardens and anywhere bramble scrub grows thick enough to offer shelter. They are extraordinary climbers, agile enough to move through bramble canes with complete ease, and bramble is one of their most important seasonal food sources. In autumn they eat the berries with obvious relish. In winter they store seeds and nuts in underground caches. They do not hibernate. They are out there in the cold and the dark, finding what they need, carrying on.

The bramble itself is a more complicated and generous plant than most people give it credit for. Those thorns that catch at your sleeves when you are picking blackberries are not there to deter the wood mouse. They are there specifically to allow her through while discouraging larger mammals whose digestive systems would destroy the seeds rather than dispersing them. The bramble designed its thorns around the small creatures it wanted to visit. A dense patch of bramble in any garden is shelter for grass snakes, nesting sites for wrens and blackcaps, a larder for dormice and badgers and foxes, and home to an entire world of small lives going quietly about their business while the rest of us walk right past.

The Piece

At the center of this bracelet, sheltered under a dome of clear quartz crystal set in a delicate stitched bezel, a tiny hand carved wood mouse sits in her own small world, visible through the crystal like something precious and protected. The quartz catches the light and holds it the way early morning light catches in dew, everything inside it slightly luminous and still.

Around her, covering the whole oval face of the bracelet, a world of bramble grows. Every single element was made by hand from sterling silver, every leaf cut individually and etched with veins and then fused to the meandering stems. Tiny round fruits cluster under the leaves, flower clusters mingle with the foliage, the whole composition dense and alive in the way a real bramble thicket is dense and alive, full of detail that reveals itself the longer you look. The background is deeply oxidized so every element reads in layered relief, silver catching the light at different heights the way leaves and berries actually do in autumn sun.

The bracelet face is approximately 2 inches tall and 1.75 inches wide, on a double band sterling silver open cuff. The band has an open back so you can slip it on and size it to your wrist on the first wearing, after which it will go on and off easily without adjustment.

The Craftsmanship

• Bracelet face: approximately 2 inches tall by 1.75 inches wide
• Stone: clear quartz crystal dome, stitched bezel setting
• Material: sterling silver throughout, oxidized
• Band: double band sterling silver open cuff
• Edition: one of a kind

One of a Kind

There is only one of this bracelet in the world. This mouse, this quartz, this entire bramble world built leaf by leaf around her: they exist once. When she finds her person she will never be made again exactly like this.

A Note from Tamara

I found Gez Robinson's Bramble Mouse page and I could not stop looking at it. There is something about watching a tiny mouse family living their whole lives in the brambles of someone's garden, someone who noticed them and made space for them and then spent years documenting their small joys and their small dramas with such obvious love, that makes me feel better about the world. I made this bracelet because I wanted to carry that feeling on my wrist. The mouse under her quartz dome is safe. She is surrounded by everything she needs. I hope whoever wears this bracelet feels a little of that same sheltered, tended feeling every time they look down at her.

Shipping

Your bracelet is finished, packaged safely, and will be on its way to you within 3 to 5 business days.