I kept my mother’s rule about silver and gold for fifty years. Two bracelets across a domino table broke it.
I kept my mother’s rule about silver and gold for fifty years. Two bracelets across a domino table broke it.
Six things I have noticed since a forty-two tournament in Brownwood, from a woman who was raised never to mix her metals and has never once written to a store about a bracelet.
Peggy Dalton · Customer · Austin, Texas · 5 min read
You ought to know who is talking before I tell you anything. I am Peggy, I am 63, and I live in Austin, Texas, with my husband Frank. Every fall Frank’s old fishing buddy Hollis talks us into driving out to Brownwood for the forty-two tournament at the community center. If you did not grow up with it, forty-two is the domino game Texans play like other folks play cards, four to a table, partners across from each other, and a whole lot of opinions about who should have bid what. Frank and I have been partners at that table for longer than I care to count.
The bracelets I am writing about are the Lavinia and the Clementine, from Iris and Nora, a small boutique here in Austin that has been quietly dressing women like us for a few years now. The Lavinia is a row of carved silver-tone beads with four little daisies on a brown cord. The Clementine is a layered band in soft blue and silver with turquoise chips and gold-tone accents. When the boutique asked if they could put my letter up for other women to read, I said yes, as long as I could be completely honest in it.
I first saw them on the woman across the table in the second round, a retired schoolteacher named Trudy. In forty-two the dominoes get shuffled face down on the table before every hand, and every time Trudy washed them, there went her wrist across the felt. A silver bracelet with little daisies, and right next to it a blue one with gold on it. Silver and gold on the same wrist. My mother would have sent her back to her room to change. I lost the hand because I was watching her shuffle instead of counting trumps, and when it was over I asked her plainly where they were from. Trudy grinned and said, “Peggy, I have been waiting all afternoon for somebody to ask.” Read on.
Mine, the next fall, at the very same table in Brownwood. Frank took it between hands and I made him leave my face out of it.
Here is what my mother taught me, and maybe yours taught you the same. You pick silver or you pick gold, and you stay with it. A good woman does not mix her metals. So for fifty years I wore silver, and every gold-tone thing anybody gave me went in the drawer. Half of what I liked in a store window I walked right past, because it had the wrong color clasp on it.
I kept that rule for fifty years. It turns out it was keeping me from some of the prettiest things I have ever owned.
The morning they came. I put them on side by side before Frank had found his reading glasses.
I ordered both that night from Hollis’s spare bedroom, and I have worn them most days since. Going by those weeks, it comes down to six things, and I will give them to you plainly.
The Lavinia has four little daisies you notice up close
It is a row of chunky silver-tone beads threaded on a dark brown cord. Four of them are pressed into daisies with fat rounded petals, and the ones in between are carved with little swirls and a dotted edge, darker down in the grooves so the pattern stands out. From across a room it reads as a nice silver band. Up close, at a card table or a lunch counter, you see the flowers, and that is when women start asking.
On my denim jacket at the kitchen table, so you can see the daisies properly.
Those little daisies are so pretty. It looks like something my grandmother kept in her jewelry box, only in better shape.
Jo Beth M., EarlyThe Clementine is turquoise without the costume look
The Clementine is several thin bands laid side by side, a soft sky blue, a silver one, a fine blue chain, and across the middle a row of turquoise chips with little gold-tone spacers between them. Underneath sits a slim gold-tone bar with four small bronze beads. It is the kind of turquoise a Texas woman wears without thinking twice, soft and pretty rather than loud, and it goes with denim, with a church dress, with just about anything blue in my closet.
On the doily my mother crocheted, which I suspect she would have something to say about.
The blue is even softer in person. I wore it with my chambray shirt and felt put together all day.
Lula P., BangsSilver and gold on one wrist, and it works
This is the one my mother never would have believed. The Lavinia is all silver-tone. The Clementine has gold-tone on its clasp, its spacers and its bar, but it also has those silver bands running through it, so it carries both. Put them side by side and the silver in one picks up the silver in the other, and the gold just looks warm instead of wrong. I have worn them together to church, to lunch, and to the grocery store, and not one soul has told me I was breaking a rule.
Where they spend the night now, side by side in the little dish by my bed.
I was always a silver girl and never mixed. These two together changed my mind. They look like they were made to go side by side.
Velda R., BlanketI can do them both up myself
I am done with tiny clasps I need Frank and a lamp to fasten. The Clementine closes with a magnetic clasp, so you bring the two ends near each other and it takes care of the rest. The Lavinia has no clasp at all. You slip it over your hand and pull the two cord ends, and the little woven knot slides to snug it to your wrist, then slides back to let it off. Both of them are on in the time it takes me to find my car keys, and I never once had to ask anybody for help.
The magnet clasp is the best thing. I can put it on one handed in the car on the way to church.
Coralee S., Santa AnnaLight enough for a whole afternoon of dominoes
A forty-two tournament is five or six hours of reaching across a table, shuffling, playing and counting. I wore both of these from the first hand to the last, and I never pushed them up my arm or took them off to give my wrist a rest. They are light and comfortable, and they sat right where I put them all afternoon. By supper I had forgotten I had them on, which is about the best thing I can say for any bracelet.
On the porch with my first cup, the Monday after Brownwood. I had not taken them off yet.
So light and comfortable. I wear mine gardening, cooking, everywhere, and forget it is there.
Mavis D., GoldthwaiteThey get along with what you already own
I still wear my good watch every day, and these sit right beside it without fighting it. Wear the Lavinia alone on a plain Tuesday, wear the Clementine alone with a blue blouse, or wear both with the watch on Sunday. And now that I have broken my mother’s rule, I have noticed the boutique does twenty-eight designs in this collection, stone ones, wraps, little fish and birds. Trudy owns five. I have my eye on a third.
I wear mine with my watch and my mother’s old bangle and it all looks like it belongs together.
Ruby T., GustineThe Lavinia and the Clementine, against the old rule
You can keep living by the rule you were raised on, like I did. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.
Silver only, or gold only, forever
Pretty things left in the store over a clasp
Tiny clasps you need help with
Too plain to notice, or too loud for Tuesday
Back in the box by noon
Silver and gold-tone that look right together
Four carved daisies and soft turquoise
A slide knot and a magnetic clasp
Wear both, or wear one
Light enough for a whole afternoon
About the price
Each of these is $29.95. They were $60.00. I will be honest, I read the whole page twice looking for the catch, because I have paid more than that for one bracelet that went straight into the drawer for being the wrong color metal. I have not found one. They came with free shipping, they were the bracelets in the pictures, and they have been on my wrist most days since.
I will pass on what the boutique told me, which is that their fall jewelry comes in small runs and the turquoise pieces do not stay in stock long. Their words, not mine. What I can tell you from my side is that the two of them together came to less than a nice lunch out for Frank and me, so it was an easy yes.
And I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real women rather than robots. The same six things I have just walked you through come up in them, over and over, in other women’s words.
If you have been walking past pretty things for years because of a rule somebody handed you, this is where I would start. Take a look before this run sells through, because once it is gone, it is gone. And if you are ever at a forty-two tournament in Brownwood and you see two women washing dominoes with silver and gold on the same wrist, one of them is Trudy, and the other one is me.
Peggy
THE LAVINIA & THE CLEMENTINE
- Lavinia: carved silver-tone beads with four little daisies
- Adjustable brown cord with a sliding knot
- Clementine: soft blue layered band with turquoise chips
- Gold-tone accents and a magnetic clasp
- Wear them together or on their own
- Light enough for all day
- Free shipping
Fall sale on now, half off. Once this run is gone, it is gone.