Tourmaline, Ammolite, Roman glass & 18K Gold

<The Heart of the Happy Prince>


Written by Younghee Kim


The prince has been crying a lot since he was young. Listening to a little sad story or seeing a sad scene hurt his heart and shed tears.

 

His father, the king, was unhappy and worried that the prince was weak, but everyone around him couldn't help but love him.

The prince was always kind to the nanny he cared for since he was a child, to the teacher who taught him to study, and to his servants who supported him all day.

 

Then one day, the prince was walking around an alley in the city with his teachers and servants, looking around the daily lives of various merchants.

The prince, who often wandering from place to place in the city and gave warm help to the needy, was looked at with respect and love by citizens.

When they saw the prince who loved the people living in his kingdom and got their hearts back from them, their servants called him 'Happy Prince’.

But as he passed through a jewelry shop, the prince saw a heartbreaking scene.

A little boy, who is the son of a Jeweller, was crying. And his father, the Jeweller, was being harassed by a debtor.

 

The prince quickly took out his precious ring, the symbol of the prince, which was on his finger, and gave it to the Jeweler. Then told him to pay off all his debts. The Jeweller and his little boy just held the prince's hand and thanked him for his dreamlike situation. Then the boy looked motionless until the prince left the store and returned to the palace to be seen as a small dot.

 

Over time, unfortunately, the Happy Prince died of heart disease before becoming the king. Not only the king and the people of the palace, but all the people of the kingdom spent a long time grieving over the death of their beloved prince.

 

The lieutenants decided to build the statue of the happy prince, which the people loved dearly, with the most precious and beautiful jewels and gold in the world, in the middle of the city. And then they hired one of the most skilled jeweler in the kingdom, and asked him to make a statue of the Happy Prince that no one seen before.

 

There was one who was more skilled than any other jeweler in the kingdom, and loved the prince more than anyone else. He was the son of the Jeweler who received a precious ring from the prince and was able to pay off all his debts and keep his family's lives.

 

For him, who was following in the footsteps of his late father a few years ago, the death of his unforgettable prince was like the fall of the heavens. But when he was asked to do the statue, he thought deeply about what he could do for him.

 

For a long time, the Jeweller kept himself awake at day and night, was agonizing over his matters.

It's like he's constantly pulling things out on paper.

It was like looking at a piece of jewelry and looking for something.

The lieutenants could only guess how much more beautiful jewelry they would take as his troubles deepened, to make a better statue.

 

But the purpose of the Jeweller was not only to make the statue of the Happy Prince beautiful.

It was meant to make sure that thieves would not steal sapphires and rubies that would go into the eyes of the Prince, or that in the event of war, they would not be taken away by predators.

 

So after a long study, he came up with a new technique that would never happen to the world.

In order to remove the jewels from the statue, the stone must be pushed from the inside to the outside, and at the same time the jewels must be removed from the outside.

 

At the end of his concern, the statue of the Happy Prince began to be made of the world's most precious sapphire, ruby and gold. He left no one to do the work, but he hung the day and night alone in sculpture and work.

 

Finally, the statue was completed and a statue of the prince was placed on a tall pillar in the middle of the square.

People from all over the country came to see the sapphire shining in the prince's eyes and the ruby emitting light from the sword, and they couldn't shut their mouths to the splendor of gold covered with thinness all over his body.

 

And then some people thought that.

"Certainly the most important the Prince's heart is made of more precious jewels than that ruby or sapphire? How precious and beautiful it must be to keep it hidden from sight!"

Sometimes there were people who asked the Jeweller directly.

Whenever they did, he kept his mouth shut and smiled an unknown smile.

 

Some tricky stubborn lieutenants asked the Jeweller to proceed with the statue's heart in their presence when it was being produced, but he dodged around because it was running out of time, and completed the statue without revealing to them the Prince's heart.

The finished statue was so beautiful that no one could dispute it, and the statue of the prince could look down on the people he loved so much from the height of the square.

 

A few years later, on a winter day, the Jeweller found something strange in the statue, as he sent a greeting to it every morning.

On the first day, the sapphire in one eye of the Prince,

The second day, the sapphire in the other eye of the Prince,

The third day, the ruby on the knuckles of the Prince,

they disappeared one by one.

When there was no more jewelry left, from the next day, the pieces of gold covering his body began to disappear.

 

He was the one who secretly worked to prevent anyone from stealing precious jewels from the statue, so the Jeweller was shocked by the suspicion of his eyes.

Meanwhile, the happy prince's eyes were empty and looking only at the dark, and the golden color of his body was gone and turned gray.

Instead of finding the statue of the prince, who had become a monstrosity of the city, lieutenants were shocked and ordered to demolish it, saying it would harm the city's landscape.

 

In the eyes of the Jeweller, who was going to see the statue of the Prince one more time before it was torn down, he saw the children of poor families come out to play with laughter from every alley.

 

And it turns out that every house had warm fireplaces on, and their cheeks were shining rosy. Looking at the rosy face, the Jeweler realized that it had something to do with the prince’s beautiful golden face turning gray and the child's cheeks turning rosy.

 

When the Jeweller arrived at the statue of the Happy Prince, he saw a small swallow frozen to death under the feet of the statue, unable to go to the south. When he looked close, he found that the swallow did not freeze to death anywhere, like it kissing the prince's feet, but lay calmly as if the feet of the Prince were his only nest. It was lying down as if it wanted to share everything with him.

 

At that moment, the Jeweller felt that all these incomprehensible things were actually puzzle into the only truth in his mind.

 

The Happy Prince would have wanted to take care of the poor in his kingdom after his death. Whenever he found a poor man in the high part of the square, the Prince made an excuse to the swallow, who could not go to the south, so that he could take a piece of jewelry from his body and bring it to them. The Jeweller realized that truth.

 

The prince pushed the jewels from the inside, and the swallow pulled the jewels from the outside to pull it out at the same time, so that the jewels could be removed despite the secret work of the Jeweler.

 

The swallow drew a ruby from the prince's sword, bit a sapphire from his eye, after taking out the last sapphire in his last eye, the Happy Prince would be blind and see nothing. Swallow must have shed tears for such a prince. The Jeweler shed tears as he felt the feeling of the swallow. To replace the eyes of the Happy Prince, the swallow looked down on the city and did not travel to the southern part of the country with its friends. And then the jeweler found out that the swallow had frozen to death at the feet of the Prince.

Finally, the statue of the Happy Prince was removed and thrown into a large blast furnace. The useless swallow was thrown in the furnace together. A long time passed again and again, until the huge statue melted down.

 

The Jeweller found the furnace to touch the last vestige of the prince with his eyes. Everything he carved carefully melted away and there were no swallows or even figures left.

 

As he was wiping away his bitter tears, he could see a rainbow growling in the ashes. He ran and burned the ashes and searched through the rainbow-colored body, and, to his surprise, he found a colorful gem.

 

Oh... How can this jewel be explained? Red, Green, Brown and Blue are subtly spewing their bodies. It was a rare gemstone that even the Jeweller, looked and touched all the jewels in the world, had never seen before. But when he took a closer look, he found that the shape and size resembled that of ammonite that he had made into his heart in a statue of a prince.

 

In fact, there was a secret that only the jeweler had. The identity of the heart in the statue of a Happy Prince was not any gem more precious than sapphire or ruby, but a fossil of 'Ammonite.' In case the statue of the Prince is damaged or wrong. To prevent the heart from being stolen, the jeweler made a colorless ammonite of no value in his heart when he carved and decorated the statue of the Prince. It was the exact opposite of the minds of the people and the lieutenants of the kingdom, who would have made it into a rare gem that they could have imagined.

 

But the ammonite was heated up in the furnace, and a miracle happened. With the sacrifice of the Prince, the love of swallow and the hope of the Jeweler, the Ammolite was created. This gem said to be created only after a long period of time, a great deal of pressure and high heat.

 

In the face of this incredible miracle, the Jeweller had no choice but to look up at the snowy sky. He was sure that God had accepted the prince and swallow's soul, and he also peeked into heaven in the aurora of this ecstatic ammolite heart.

 

There were the Happy Prince who became an angel and a carefree swallow singing beautiful songs on his shoulders in heaven, where the Jeweler peeped through this niche of the mysterious Jewelry.

 

 

-Ammonite : Fossils of Ammonite, a deep-sea creature that appeared in the Paleozoic Era and became extinct in the Mesozoic Era.

 

-Ammolite : When the fossil ammonite is subjected to high heat and high pressure for a long period of time, it happens it being opal very rarely, making it a mysterious and brilliant rainbow-colored gem.

Ammonite, which is miraculously ‘opalized’, is called ammolite.

It is a precious gem that will run out of stock in the next 20 years.

 

-The Happy Prince : The fairy tale written by Oscar Wilde

 

All Photos and Writings by ⓒ Younghee Kim 2021. All rights reserved.

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