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A Charm Bracelet Started in the Sixties

Now I’m in my sixties! 

Do you have one of these in a drawer or a jewelry box somewhere? I hardly wear jewelry nowadays.  These were popular when I was in 7, 8th grade- freshman in high school. (1966-67).  Charm bracelet definition and history

Maybe  you’re sporting one of those trendy cable types with the bead charms? Each one a carefully chosen gift by someone who knows you or a gift to self, to commemorate an interest, travel or person in your life. 

Funny, I have a guitar and a grand piano on mine but am not skilled at either. I taught myself on a Sears guitar the summer of 1964 and could strum Michael, Row the Boat Ashore but a charm to signify guitar playing is funny. And I took piano lessons, unsuccessfully.

I’ve seen gold charm bracelets in antique stores for a lot of money. You wonder about the owner and the significance of the charms collected. And a full charm bracelets can make way too much annoying noise, jingling in the theatre. 

Wednesday afternoon, I was out with a couple of friends and admired one’s bracelet with holiday charms, a charm a month bracelet. I told her about mine. She asked me if it still fit! Hmmmm, how much bigger is my wrist now? It has enough links so  yes it still does fit but I didn’t know until I got home, dug it out and tried it on. Ha!

The one charm is a typewriter with a tiny carriage that moves back and forth. Fancied myself a writer? 

I think I remember which friend gifted me the Forget-Me-Not.  There’s an enameled disk from a 1965 field trip to the UN. 

When I came home and found my old charm bracelet and went to photograph it, I mistakenly pulled out a crystal dish I thought would look good under it. The dish towel was a better solution. No reflection.

It’s silver and unpolished. I remember you could have the charms sodered on so they wouldn’t come off. If I were to add a charm for my interests today it would have to be a skein of yarn and knitting needles and places visited would fill it up and then some. Charms for my life now could be so different.

Photographing jewelry is tricky, I forgot.

One aspect I wasn’t really aware of or considering is this- “The wearing of charms may have begun as a form of amulet or talisman to ward off evil spirits or bad luck.[1]”.          

 Of course…….lucky charms! Duh!

Feel free to send a photo of your charm bracelet or a write about a specific charm. Initial pins were the rage in the late sixties, too. 


The dish towel for a backdrop 


…compared to my first thought of using a the crystal dish as a backdrop to photograph the bracelet 


The shadows from the dish looked better than the jewelry.

Plastic charm necklace from the 80’s blogpost you might remember.

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