Passing on Our Gifts To Our Children

February 8, 2016

As beings who have lived on this planet for such a long time now, I truly believe we each have a responsibility to pass our gifts and our learned skills on to our children.

There is no judgement of what those gifts may be, hey for some people it may be as simple as teaching their kids to burp the alphabet (no names mentioned here haha), but in my home I get to pass on a love and desire to make things with my hands.

My mum passed on this gift to me in the form of sewing, designing and making clothing as well as an understanding of fabric and its drape and capability.

I have used my hands for many creative endeavors during my life but so far my greatest love (obviously) has been silver and gold smithing.

It doesn’t matter how many rings I make, there is always a variance in the metal and an understanding that I need to reach with it before it yields its secrets and allows me to turn it into something amazing.

Everyday at the jewellers bench is completely different and that in itself is amazing.

My kids have grown up watching me use flames to turn metal into family heirlooms.

They often sit in my workshop eating their afternoon tea while I carefully engrave and solder (and they think nothing of it), but when we travel together and I take them to villages of craftsmen and women and they see and experience hundreds of years of craftsmanship passed down through families with their own eyes – I know they look at me differently and they can see and feel the magic that comes from working with your hands.

I don’t know what either of my little people will end up doing in their lives, but I do know they carry within them the gift of creativity and a trust and belief that their own little hands can make, build and create incredible things.