Today, I'd like to introduce you to our selection of New Enamelled Silver Cufflinks of Special Interest.
Special interest? What could that mean?
Well, before you start reporting me to the police, here's a selection of what I'm on about:
Let's start with a flag. Everybody knows the Union Jack; it's been the flag of Great Britain since 1801.
The more observant of you may have noticed that the Union Jack flag is in the shape of a rectangle.
So how do you put it onto an OVAL cufflink face, without it looking, simply, wrong and out of place? Because if it doesn't 'feel' right, then you won't sell any because people won't want to wear them.
See how our master cufflink designers got round that one -- they managed to include the design, but if you look carefully, they changed the angles of the diagonal red and white stripes, and used the oval shape to remove the edges -- to make the most beautiful Union Jack cufflinks:
The main thing is -- it just looks correct, even though it has been slightly adapted. A triumph of design!
Now let's jump three and a half thousand miles across the Atlantic and see what our American cousins use as their national emblem:
The 'Stars and Stripes', as the American Flag is known, was first introduced in this form in 1960. That's after Alaska and Hawaii were admitted into the Union.
But hang on a moment. The red stripes look relatively simple to replicate on a cufflink face, but did you count the stars? How on earth do you fit fifty stars on a cufflink? The answer is, of course, that you don't. You use the magic of design to come up with something representative, that won't offend anyone's patriotic pride. This is how the final American Flag cufflinks look like:
Seven stars and four red stripes do the trick very nicely, thank you.
And here's a special pair we find very popular with American businessmen who are posted here in London for a while:
It's much easier to depict the separate English and Scottish flags -- hardly any manipulation needed here:
Some flags, however, are just too much for our designers. Down under, our Australian cousins manage to squeeze a small Union Jack in the top left corner of their flag:
Very kind of them to remember 'The Old Country', but impossible to reduce the Union Jack to a quarter the size on a cufflink face. So we've had to adapt, and instead we used the constellation of stars on the right of the flag which is known as 'The Southern Cross' -- an important national symbol of Australia and instantly recognisable to any authentic Aussie.
Flags aren't all we can put onto enamelled silver cufflinks of special interest. If you're American and love your country, why not purchase a pair of silver cufflinks, enamelled with the Seal of the President of the United States? The faces are larger than normal, so we have to make them with swivel bars behind.
We find another of our pairs of enamelled cufflinks are specially popular with American clients. Again, be prepared to see another design treat.
How do you manage to fit the whole world onto a pair of round cufflink faces? Well, based on the classic Mercator cylindrical map projection of 1569, our designers did the impossible. We call them 'New World, Old World', which seems to sum them up very accurately.
Gambling -- especially playing cards -- is a great excuse for an imaginative pair of cufflinks. Here are some suggestions for the gamblers amongst us:
Finally, here's a treat for those of you with a sense of humour who are being dragged to a black tie event you don't really want to attend. How do you make a silent but principled protest?
Well, how about our silver and black enamel skull cufflinks? They'll bring out the pirate in you!
You can see a full selection of our New Enamelled Silver Cufflinks of Special Interest here.
