Lapis

I splurged on a piece of jewelry, and it wasn't even the piece of jewelry I've been planning on as my next jewelry purchase, which was going to be a pair of big white gold hoop earrings. Friday afternoon I wandered into my most beloved antique store (Gaslight and Shadows, San Francisco, CA) and tried on this lapis lazuli cabochon and gold cocktail ring. I love it; it's beautiful, it's different, and it's old. Phyllis Nabhan, who owns the store, looked it up in her system and pulled out a bookkeeping ledger from 1961. She flashed it at me--I saw pages and pages filled with her handwriting. "This is how we did bookkeeping before computers," she laughed. "I don't know anything about the ring, because I bought it with a lot of other things in one big lot," she said, "But it's from the 1930's."

Here it is. I know my hand looks dry and decrepit, but still, the ring looks awesome with this kind of orange-red nailpolish...