[ad_1]
II have an old chocolate box in the back of my wardrobe that rattles when you shake it. Inside are the once pearly, now discolored baby teeth of my two grown daughters. Sometimes one of them will come across the tin, open it and recoil in disgust.
I find the teeth disgusting too, but I can’t get them out. They may look like souvenirs kept by a serial killer, but to me they are a tangible reminder of a time that has passed so quickly that I struggle to remember it.
I thought I was the only one with a secret collection of baby teeth, but when I asked other parents about it, the stories came out. Melbourne film director and Deakin University lecturer Anna Brownfield admits she also cares about her now 14-year-old son’s baby teeth. “I’m quite a sentimental person. Every time I look at them, I just flood my brain with memories of that time together,” she says.
Sydney publicist Jo Corbett has also kept the baby teeth of her two children, now aged 18 and 21. “When your kids are little, you just pick up bits and pieces. I have the first baby hospital band, the first birthday candle and the hair from the first haircut,” she says.
The Corbett children are as impressed with their mother’s collection as mine is. When her daughter Ruby recently discovered the box of teeth, she said, “What the hell, Mom? Here you have human remains!” Corbett did not delay. “I like to disgust them,” she says.
Keeping teeth, bones, hair and other “human remains” is a practice that crosses cultures and thousands of years. In the 19th century, the English journal Notes and Queries recorded that throwing teeth (along with salt) into fires was a widespread practice in the UK and Western Europe, as well as saving teeth to be buried with them – the idea being that they should to be able to account for all your body parts before the pearly gates.
In the 19th century, Queen Victoria commissioned jewelry made from her children’s teeth and marble replicas of their legs and limbs and popularized mourning jewelry after the death of her husband, Prince Albert. Keeping physical memories of people we love feels ancient and elementary; perhaps it is strange our modern reluctance to be open about it.
When it comes to keeping your kids’ teeth, tucking them away in a box in the closet is obviously for amateurs. The online marketplace Etsy has dozens of listings for jewelry made from teeth, with many custom items created from teeth submitted by customers. It seems if you want to immortalize your children’s teeth, jewelry is the way to go.
Some of the most interesting works have been produced in Australia. Sydney fashion designer Hayley Smith turned to jewelery when she couldn’t find the unique accessories she wanted for her catwalk collections. She now crafts delicate signet rings, crowns and pendants from human and animal teeth, as well as a range of jewelery made from hair and ash for her label The snake and the swan.
In Melbourne, former cemetery keeper Jackie Williams understands better than most the intense emotional connection people have with their teeth, both their own and other people’s. She started her studio Grave Metallum Jewelry after the suicide of a friend. The desire to understand more about the rituals and culture of mourning inspired a fascination with objects of remembrance.
“Many people have a grave they will visit or keep ashes. I’m making a tombstone that you can wear,” she says. “It’s a part of someone you can carry with you every day.”
after the promotion of the newsletter
Williams makes a range of jewelery using teeth, including baby teeth. Taking advice from her dentist, she learned how to bond and heal damaged teeth and even made a pair of wedding rings for a couple who wanted to include a tooth in each ring.
Wodonga accountant Rinelda van den Berg contacted Williams to order two rings, one for herself and one for her then five-year-old daughter. “When my first tooth came in I was a bit devastated because she was growing so fast. I wanted to remember this moment in time.”
Having only one child, Van den Berg feels every important moment intensely. “All her transitions are first and last for us. Setting them in jewelry makes them last a little longer.”
Williams doesn’t have children, but says if she did, she would keep their teeth. “This is history; it is proof that they existed. Instead, she chooses to collect her cat’s teeth and whiskers.
Unlike Queen Victoria, who kept her children’s baby teeth on display in a gilded coffin of satin and velvet, my children’s baby teeth are doomed to remain in their chocolate box. No one in the family cares to see them, and my daughters have no interest in inheriting them. My little rattle box only matters to me. I like knowing they’re there, but when I die, they’ll probably be thrown in the trash.
Until then I have found a secondary use for them. When my daughters head into my bedroom to look for something, I ominously tell them, “Don’t rummage through my closet, because you never know what you might find.”
[ad_2]
