My clients got married 20 years ago, and at that time I made them the betrothal ring above, with an ancestral diamond hidden under a small “temple” and the words Mazel Tov in Hebrew letters in the archways.

Sadly, the ring was stolen in a ghastly burglary. Happily, the insurance covered it.

I have remade the ring, with some minor variations. If you click on any of the pictures you will see them at a larger-than-postage-stamp size.

Starting on the ring. The green stone is an emerald.

Parts of the temple

The temple assembled

Hinges in place

Out of the fire – just setting and polishing to do

Another view

The setting for the diamond

All set and polished

Another view

Yet another view

And another view

The hinge open

The diamond revealed.

A nice ring needs a nice box

I made a little hinge for the box

The ring snugly in its home.

Drawings of the Blind

My mother, who signed her paintings with her first name, Lesley, was born Lesley de Villiers. Later she was Lesley Cope, then, after 1960, she was Lesley Luitingh. She died in a road accident in 1989.

Tidying her effects after her death, I found a series of pencil drawings tucked into folders and hidden under a bed in her studio. For as long as I can remember, Lesley collected paper – cartridge, water-colour paper, papers with light textures for drawing – and these had accumulated in folders and drawers. At last she had found a use for them – paper now yellowed or blotched with age, slightly frayed at the edges from being moved, suitable for the recording of the old and infirm. There were ninety-six drawings and two reproductions of drawings when I assembled them all. The drawings were of an outdoor eye clinic at the Dera Baba Jaimal Singh, and are mostly of patients, the elderly blind who had come to the clinic in large numbers for cataract removal operations. These drawings avoided the pietism of her later paintings, they avoided the allegorical, and they avoided the cartoon-like abstractions that she developed for illustrating children’s books. They avoided technical skill, for though the execution was skilful, their ease transcended it. They stood as a single great work, a document of suffering and compassion finally integrating her life and her art. In these pictures of lovingly-observed affliction, the hearts and eyes of the blind strain heavenward for the light, through the body’s frailty.

Here are most of them. Click on them to see them bigger. Seriously. At this size they are impossible to appreciate.