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EditorsJun 02, 2012
Jewelry of the 'Shadows'
When my first son was very young and very sick and spending too much time in operating rooms and intensive care, I sought a diversion to distract him from what was happening. Portable DVD players were just becoming available. So...
When my first son was very young and very sick and spending too much time in operating rooms and intensive care, I sought a diversion to distract him from what was happening. Portable DVD players were just becoming available. So what we landed on was watching movies--specifically, the classic monster movies by Universal: Frankenstein, Dracula, the Hunchback, The Mummy, the Wolf Man and so on. Lying together on his gurney in those rooms, we screened film after film. We bought matching action figure collectables. We tuned out all the negativity going on around us.
An unintended side effect was--after we had gotten past those hard times--that we had turned our son into a horror genre junkie. Several years later, then, we embarked on an associated journey that has lasted years now.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, television produced a soap opera that centered on the supernatural. "Dark Shadows" had begun as a somewhat normal soap with a Gothic-romantic theme. But when it attracted only limited audiences and faced cancellation, producer Dan Curtis took a leap that could only have been broached in those early days of television. He introduced a vampire, who quickly captured the imagination of, predominantly, America's youth and went on to become the main character, resuscitating the show in the process. As months passed, vampire Barnabas Collins was joined by a closet-full of ghosts, werewolves, witches, zombies, warlocks, demons and other creatures of the night--a child's lurid delight!
Now, Dark Shadows' legacy has been revitalized by Tim Burton's Hollywood feature starring Johnny Depp (who, by the way, started his career with a supporting role in the horror classic "Nightmare on Elm Street" and is a self-avowed Dark Shadows fan).
What's exceptional for our business is the starring role played in Dark Shadows by fine jewelry. In fact, jewelry was the very plot element used to usher the vampire into the show. Willie Loomis, a con man living in the Victorian Maine mansion of the wealthy Collins family, learned that family ancestors had historically embraced the practice of being buried with their jewelry. His next step, of course, was to break into the Collins mausoleum and begin prying open coffins. Two centuries earlier, the vampire had been locked and chained in a coffin in a secret room by his father. When Loomis raised that lid, out came Barnabas and his fury.
Over
subsequent episodes (1225 in total, all of which my son and I have personally viewed, many twice--Dark Shadows enjoys the status of having been the only soap opera ever to have had every single episode recorded), jewelry continued to take center stage--pendants and amulets, silver pentagrams; the vampire's ring itself was of such notoriety it launched an early version of targeted children's novelties marketing.
The show's plot regularly hinged on elements such as misplaced earrings. Overall, fine jewelry was key in defining the leading family's societal position of power and authority--a model for American royalty and a supporting statement of the substantial importance of luxury accessories for the affluent.
The vampire's ring, in 9-carat rose gold and onyx.
Needless to say, I was thrilled to learn that British designer Stephen Einhorn was unveiling a bespoke collection for Burton's film. Einhorn created pieces for the vampire's love-nemesis, Angelique the witch, as well as the vampire himself, among others.
"I had to make two different sized rings for Johnny Depp's character, as Tim Burton and Johnny Depp liked it so much they wanted it to be worn throughout the film--one for his extended finger and one to wear over his gloves," he explains.
Popular culture reference is critical in establishing and defining the meaning of our product. Four decades ago, there was no question as to the desirability of fine jewelry and its position in the cultural mindset as a symbol of elite status. Royalty and captains of industry naturally embraced it as core to their lifestyles and images. Today, we are the stewards of this heritage and must keep a keen eye toward supplying anything that may sully its image with a strategically placed stake to the heart.
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