Our founder shares the commission that started everything — a faded photograph, a widowed wife, and a conversation about what it means to keep someone close.
In 2009, I was working from a small studio in Melbourne — making bespoke jewellery, mostly rings and pendants, mostly for weddings. I had been trained in lost-wax casting at the Argyle School in Perth, and I was good at the technical side of the work. What I had not yet found was the work I was meant to be doing.
Then a woman named Margaret called.
Margaret\'s Photograph
Margaret was 74. Her husband, Robert, had died the previous year after 51 years of marriage. She\'d found my studio through a friend — a florist who had ordered a brooch — and she telephoned one Tuesday morning to ask whether I could make \'something with a photograph\'. She had no clear idea what she wanted. She only knew she wanted to be able to carry him with her.
She sent the photograph by post — physical post, the envelope sealed with tape as though it contained something fragile. It did. A 4x6 print, slightly bent at one corner, taken in 1973 at their beach house near Lorne. Robert in profile, facing the sea. A strong jaw, short-cropped hair just beginning to grey at the temples. He looked like a man at peace.
What I Learned in the Making
I had never attempted a portrait medallion before. I spent two weeks studying everything I could find about the form — Renaissance portrait medals, Roman coins, Victorian memorial jewellery. I made four failed wax attempts before I began to understand what I was actually trying to do: not to copy Robert\'s face, but to capture the quality of presence he had in that photograph. The ease of him. The way he occupied space.
When I finally got the wax right, I cast it in 18k yellow gold — Margaret had been clear about that, it had to be gold, it had to be warm — and set it in a plain polished bezel on a belcher chain. The whole piece was just under 40 millimetres. It felt, when you held it, like it had weight. Not just physical weight. Something else.
“She held it for a long time without saying anything. Then she said: \'He\'s still in there.\' That was all. That was everything.”
How One Commission Became a Practice
Within six months, Margaret had told twelve people about the piece. Of those, four became clients. Within two years, portrait medallions had become the majority of my work. I had found, somewhat by accident, the thing I was best at — and the thing that felt most worth doing.
Ashbourne & Vale was formally established in 2012. We have made over three hundred portrait commissions since then. Each one begins the same way: a photograph, a telephone call, a story. And each one ends the same way too — with a moment of quiet that tells us we got it right.
Margaret\'s piece still comes to mind at the beginning of every commission. It is, in a sense, our north star.
