NEW YORK, Dec 13 — “I’ve loved jewellery my whole life,” said Augusten Burroughs, the best-selling author whose most recent book, Lust & Wonder: A Memoir, discusses his most important and romantic relationships, his fondness for jewellery being one.
“As a child, I loved shiny things,” he said. “I would buy little silver rings with my allowance. I’d keep them in my pocket or put them on display in my room and stare at them. I loved looking at the intricacies of something so elaborate in something so tiny.”
His paternal grandparents helped create his interest. “My grandfather was a cough syrup salesman and went to China on business,” Burroughs recalled. “He would bring home jade for my grandmother. I loved looking at it and touching it. She was the one relative I was closest with, and so I associate jewellery and comfort with her.”
When he was eight, his grandfather gave him a 23-carat gold signet ring. “I loved owning something someone had laboured over,” he said. “There was artistry and intent. It was portable, beautiful and permanent.”
Today, Burroughs’ collection comprises more than 200 pieces, many of them men’s rings. “I didn’t buy anything expensive until I had money, which I got from my first advance for my novel Sellevision in 2000,” he said. “I spent the entire amount on a ring I saw on display in the window of Cartier. It was a limited edition that was a kinetic sculpture of the Earth, which unfolded and turned into a sphere. When I saw it I knew I had to have it. It’s one of the few pieces of jewellery I’ve ever bought new.”
Burroughs, 51, has boyish, Southern charm and green eyes, which on this particular day were set off by his pink Oxford and jeans. Eight other works have followed that first novel — four memoirs, three essay collections and a self-help book — selling a total of nearly 10 million copies worldwide. Probably the best known is Running With Scissors, which in 2006 was made into a movie starring Annette Bening and Alec Baldwin.
Although he became serious about collecting in 2002, “2008 is when it really ramped up,” he said. “I started finding and acquiring these pre-Georgian rings in onyx and malachite, which I loved. The more I learned about gemstones and gemology, the more it exploded for me.”
When it comes to the jewellery’s composition, Burroughs favours jade, gems and pearls, and he says he can spend up to 15 hours a day searching for an item online. That is not surprising, considering the lengthy list of guidelines he reeled off: “If I’m buying a gemstone, it can’t be treated. If I’m buying a ruby, it can’t be heated — it alters the colour — and no substances can fill fissures in the stones. I want as natural and as unadulterated as possible.”
“Grade-A jade can only be waxed with beeswax,” he added. “Sapphires need to be earth-minded. And I’ll only purchase pre-Mikimoto pearls. I’m not interested in Bulgari, Cartier or vintage Van Cleef. Nothing mass-produced. I like handmade, one-off pieces.”
Burroughs said that when he is under stress or on a book tour, he loves to prowl junk shops and estate sales from Maine to San Francisco for finds.
While at a vintage shop in New England several years ago, he paid a few hundred dollars for an art deco ring with a jade stone in a setting of base metal.
Once he was home, he popped out the stone and put it in a 22-carat gold setting that he had designed. “The jade quality was spectacular,” he said. “It was the perfect imperial emerald green, and the person who sold it to me called it ‘that green stone’, which happens a lot. I’m fascinated by how people can miss something which I feel almost programmed to recognise.
“When I do, I get a physical reaction. It’s a thrill paired with a sense of need and immediacy. I get goose bumps and a flushed feeling in my chest. My face gets hot. It’s the recognition of something exquisite and extraordinary. Like the feeling of seeing a unicorn in the woods.”
Another score happened three years ago in a junk store near Kettering, Ohio. It was December 24, and Burroughs and his husband, Christopher Shelling, were shopping for last-minute Christmas gifts. “I spotted these white ‘plastic’ beads in the counter,” he said. “The instant I held them in my hand there was no hesitation.”
The beads, marked at US$17 (RM75), were flawless angel-skin coral — white, with a soft blush of pink. “Hundreds of people walk into that store every day, and there they were, lying next to rhinestone clip earrings and a gaudy, red plastic necklace,” Burroughs said. “Christopher thought they were plastic. I know he was thinking, ‘Why is he buying this?’ But now he’s been trained. I told him what they were the minute we walked out of the store.”
There are two pieces of jewellery Burroughs does not take off. One is a finely carved three-sided emerald jade necklace from the 1920s that he found while sleuthing in New Hampshire. The other is his wedding ring, a midcentury marquise-cut diamond in a setting that resembles the decor of the Chrysler Building.
For a serious storyteller like Burroughs, it’s no surprise he views his rings as having a similar role. Each has history, energy and most important, narrative.
“With each owner, with each time they wore it, a little piece of their soul attached itself to this highly personal, exquisitely beautiful item,” he said. “I love the stories that seep into these vintage rings over time by the previous owners. I like to think about who wore them.”
Marriage, a new book and a move to a calm, country lifestyle have slowed things down for Burroughs, whose readers know his early years were filled with anxiety, addiction and affliction. Jewellery has been a constant. It still is.
“Growing up, I had a very ugly and turbulent past,” he said. “There were a lot of fractured and jagged edges with no stability, and being able to carry around or wear something beautiful and perfect is somehow reassuring. It proves these things exist in the world.” — The New York Times
