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Anne Boleyn astrolabe and signature pendant, set with pearl
20mm disc, sterling silver or gold vermeil
For those who are entirely, unapologetically themselves.
The source:
This pendant carries two things from Anne Boleyn's Book of Hours, her personal symbol and her own signature.
On the front: the astrolabe — the same symbol Anne drew alongside her inscription Le temps viendra on that page of her Book of Hours, and which also appears in the Ecclesiastes manuscript associated with her, shown at Hever Castle for the first time this century. Scholars understand the astrolabe not as an astronomical reference but as Anne's most personal mark — an emblem of time, of self-knowledge, of the moral weight of living within finite days. It is the symbol she chose before she adopted the crowned falcon of her queenship. Before the world knew who she would become, this is the mark she made.
On the reverse: her signature, as she wrote it. Anne Boleyn.
Together: her private symbol and her name. I am this. I know what time it is.
The stone:
The pearl is historically exact. Anne Boleyn's documented jewellery collection was notable for its pearls — worn in ropes, sewn into hoods, and set into pendants. She appears in portraits with pearl necklaces at her throat. In the Tudor period, pearls were the stone of queens: rare, organic, formed through genuine process, lustrous without being showy. They were also, in English folk tradition, associated with emotional truth — things that form slowly, through real experience, from something that began as an intrusion and became something precious.
The talisman:
Wear this as a declaration of self-knowledge. Knowing who you are, and being willing to put your name to it.
Materials:
Double-sided engraved 20mm disc pendant, pearl, sterling silver or gold vermeil
Available in: Sterling silver / Gold Vermeil
All of our pieces are handmade in London to order. Current lead time is two weeks.
Anne Boleyn handwriting pendant, set with faceted garnet
20mm disc, sterling silver or gold vermeil
For those who know their moment is coming.
The source:
The inscription on this pendant is taken directly from Anne Boleyn's Book of Hours — a devotional manuscript made in Bruges around 1450, displayed at Hever Castle. On a single, deeply personal page, Anne wrote in her own hand: Le temps viendra. Je Anne Boleyn. The time will come. I, Anne Boleyn.
She wrote this beneath an illumination of the Last Judgement. Alongside the inscription she drew an astrolabe — a medieval instrument for measuring time and the position of the sun, used here not as a scientific reference but as a private emblem of time passing, mortality, and divine reckoning. Hever Castle's own scholars describe it as a meditation on temporality: the certainty that time is finite, that judgement comes, and that it will come for everyone.
We don't know exactly what Anne meant by it. We know where she wrote it. We know what happened to her afterward. We know that her statement is one of absolute certainty: the time will come.
The stone:
The garnet is historically deliberate. Garnet was among the most valued stones of the Tudor period, appearing consistently in portraits of court women and set in the heavy gold necklaces and pendants that marked status, favour, and endurance. The stone's deep red, its documented associations with vitality and the courage required for difficult journeys, and its durability — 6.5–7.5 on the Mohs scale — made it the only honest choice for a piece bearing these words.
Untreated. The colour is the stone's own.
The talisman:
Wear this in the periods of waiting that require patience without passivity. When you know what's coming but cannot yet make it arrive. A reminder, in Anne Boleyn's own words, that timing is not the same as defeat.
Materials:
Engraved 20mm disc pendant, faceted garnet, sterling silver, gold vermeil or 9k yellow gold
Available in: Sterling silver / Gold Vermeil
All of our pieces are handmade in London to order. Current lead time is two weeks.
Cleopatra handwriting pendant, set with a lapis lazuli cabochon
19.5mm × 12mm oval pendant, available in sterling silver or gold vermeil
For those who make things happen.
The source:
This pendant carries what is believed to be the only surviving sample of Cleopatra's handwriting in existence.
The document is Papyrus Bingen 45 — formally known as Papyrus Berlin 25239, held in the Neues Museum in Berlin. Dated to February 23, 33 BC, it is a royal decree granting tax exemption to Publius Canidius, a close associate of Mark Antony, permitting him to export 10,000 artabas of wheat and import 5,000 amphorae of wine annually, free of customs duties. The decree was written by a court scribe. At the bottom, in a different hand, is a single Greek word: γινέσθωι. Ginesthoi. So be it. Make it happen.
Historians believe this word — and only this word on the entire document — is Cleopatra's own handwriting. The last ruling monarch of ancient Egypt, approving a decree for her lover's general, two years before the Battle of Actium. One word. Absolute authority.
That word is on this pendant. In Cleopatra’s actual handwriting.
The stone:
Lapis lazuli was the prestige stone of the ancient world — ground into ultramarine, the most expensive pigment in medieval Europe; found in the tomb of Tutankhamun; traded across the ancient world from its source in the mines of Afghanistan. In Cleopatra's Egypt, lapis was a stone of royal and divine authority. The deep blue with its golden pyrite inclusions — a night sky, a stone that looks like it contains the cosmos — was inseparable from the imagery of power and the sacred.
The cabochon cut is deliberate: it maximises the stone's colour and depth, and foregrounds the natural pyrite inclusions rather than hiding them.
The talisman:
Wear this when you need to act decisively. Not when you're certain — certainty is a luxury. When the situation requires a single word of authority and you are the only one who can give it. Ginesthoi. Make it so.
Materials:
Engraved oval pendant, lapis lazuli cabochon
Available in sterling silver and gold vermeil
All of our pieces are handmade in London to order. Current lead time is two weeks.
Crowned snake pendant, set with a 2mm faceted emerald
12.5mm × 19mm oval pendant in sterling silver or gold vermeil
For those who carry authority without the need to announce it.
The image on this pendant is taken from a painted serpent in the Tigran Tomb, Alexandria, Egypt — a tomb Lucinda visited in person. The Tigran Tomb sits above ground, directly over the famous catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa, and dates to roughly the second century CE. It was found submerged and excavated in 1952. Inside, painted on the wall guarding the doorway to the burial chamber, a serpent rears upright, crowned with a sun-disc and horns.
Art historian Marjorie S. Venit, writing in the American Journal of Archaeology, identifies this serpent as Isis-Thermouthis — Isis in her serpent form, a recognised manifestation of the goddess in Greco-Roman Egypt. Venit herself notes the crown is faintly and ambiguously rendered on the original wall painting; even scholars are reading a faded image.
What makes this image significant is who claimed her. Cleopatra publicly styled herself as the New Isis — a political and religious identity she built her entire authority on. This is not a generic protective serpent. It is, very plausibly, the specific goddess Cleopatra claimed to be, painted on a tomb wall in her own city.
The stone: Egypt's emerald mines — among the oldest in the world, worked since at least 330 BC — were a significant source of the stone throughout antiquity. Cleopatra was documented to have a particular association with emeralds; she is recorded to have gifted them bearing her own portrait. The emerald is among the most materially complex of gemstones: a variety of beryl coloured vivid green by chromium and vanadium, with characteristic inclusions — jardin, the French term for garden — that make each stone deeply individual.
A 2mm faceted emerald: small, precise, and exactly right for a stone whose meaning is in its nature rather than its size.
The talisman: Wear this as a reminder that authority is not performance. A goddess painted in faded colour on a tomb wall, claimed by the most powerful woman of her age — sovereignty that doesn't need to announce itself to be real.
Materials:
Engraved pendant, 2mm faceted emerald
12.5mm x 19mm oval pendant available in sterling silver or gold vermeil
All of our pieces are handmade in London to order. Current lead time is two weeks.
About the CollectionThe Inspiration
Most jewellery claiming historical inspiration is vague — a vibe, a colour palette, a half-remembered myth. Forged means something specific: every piece is engraved with an image or words that exist, that have been photographed, catalogued, studied by scholars.
Anne Boleyn's actual handwriting, from a manuscript she held in her own hands. Cleopatra's only surviving autograph, on a tax document signed two years before everything fell apart. A goddess painted on a tomb wall in the city Cleopatra ruled, claimed as her own image.
Forged isn't inspired by history. It's made from it.
The Sources
Anne Boleyn left behind a Book of Hours — a private prayer book, displayed at Hever Castle — containing the only intimate, unguarded glimpse we have of her interior life. On one page: an inscription, a personal symbol, and her own signature. Written before she was queen.
Cleopatra VII left behind a single word, in her own hand, on a piece of administrative bureaucracy: a tax exemption for an ally of Mark Antony. Historians believe it's the only surviving sample of her handwriting in existence. Two years later, Actium and the end of an empire. But first: one word of absolute authority.
Both women are remembered, mostly, for how their stories ended. Forged is interested in something else — the evidence of who they were while they were still deciding what would happen next.
This collection launches on the summer solstice — the longest day, the point of greatest light before the year turns. It felt right for a collection built on women who made the most of the time they had.
