Mariner Gold Bracelets

A bracelet made from the mariner link, which is an oval with a bar across its middle dividing it into two windows. The links join end to end through the windows, and the bars keep every link lying in the same plane, so the bracelet lies flat on the wrist as a row of open frames.

At wrist length only a few links are seen at once, and each reads as an object in its own right, with the bars falling at regular intervals like the rungs of a ladder laid across the arm. The skin shows through the windows of every link.

It is made flat, with a polished plate face, or puffed, with rounded hollow links that stand up from the arm. Clasp type and link form are stated on each listing.

As a sequence of separate links rather than as a texture. A necklace shows enough mariner links for them to blur into a lattice; a bracelet shows a short run across the top of the wrist, and the eye takes each link in as a frame with a bar.

What it follows is the bars. They fall at regular intervals along the arm, and they read as bright rungs with open spaces between them. On a wide bracelet each rung is a distinct object; on a fine one the rungs are close enough to become a rhythm in a bright band.

The windows are part of the reading too. Skin shows inside every link, so the bracelet looks lighter and more open than a closed-link bracelet of the same width, and the bars stand out against the darker windows on either side.

Yes, and it stays flat as the arm moves. The bar in every link prevents the neighbouring links from rotating inside it, so the whole row holds the orientation it was made in, with every link face up across the top of the arm.

A plain oval bracelet twists as the arm rotates, because its links are free to turn inside one another. A mariner cannot, and so it never needs to be straightened or turned back after the wrist has moved.

The one place it is not flat is at the sides of the wrist, where the bracelet curves from the top of the arm to the underside and has to turn edge-on. That turn happens at a single link on each side.

Because a flat bracelet has to go from face up on top of the arm to face down underneath it, and the only way from one to the other is through edge-on. The turn is normal, and every flat bracelet makes it twice on the way round.

On most chains the turn is spread gently over several links. On a mariner the bars hold each link in the plane of its neighbours, so the chain cannot spread the turn, and it happens abruptly at one link on each side of the wrist.

On a fine mariner that link is too small to notice. On a wide puffed mariner it stands on its edge at the side of the wrist and shows as a break in the row of bars. It is the pattern behaving as its geometry requires, not a fault.

It can, because of its windows. The openings in each link are large enough to admit a clasp, a jump ring or a charm from a neighbouring bracelet, and once inside a window such a fitting can lodge against the bar and hold the two pieces together.

The safe neighbours are pieces with nothing to lodge. A smooth bangle sits beside a mariner without incident, and so does a chain bracelet with compact closed links, which rides over the mariner's frames rather than entering them.

The awkward neighbours are charm bracelets and anything with dangling fittings. Another mariner of a different width is a good companion, since neither bracelet has a fitting small enough to enter the other's windows.

On fine and medium widths, a lobster clasp on a jump ring hung from the last link, closing onto the last link at the other end or onto a small ring fitted there. Nothing is added to the chain except the clasp, and the row of ovals runs right up to it.

On wide mariners the clasp is a box clasp made in the form of a single link, with a sprung tongue and a hinged safety catch, and it takes the place of one oval in the row. Closed, the bars continue across it and the fastening is nearly invisible.

The links on either side of the clasp carry the most handling, since the bracelet is opened and closed there daily, and they are the first to loosen. They are the place to look if the bracelet ever feels slack.

By removing whole links. The jeweller opens the link nearest the clasp at one end of its oval, slides off as many links as are needed, and closes the opened link by bringing the ends of the oval together and soldering the join. The clasp is then reattached.

The link is never opened at the bar. The bar is what gives the oval its shape, and a link cut there collapses inward and cannot be closed cleanly. Opened at the narrow end, the join is hidden inside the adjoining link once the bracelet is closed.

Because every link is identical, taking out any number leaves the row of bars regular and the pattern unchanged. The work is done at one end and the rest of the bracelet is never touched.

It can, and the wrist is where it is most likely to happen. A puffed link is formed from thin metal around a hollow, and a bracelet is knocked against desks, door frames and steering wheels in a way a necklace is not. A hard point pressed into a rounded frame flattens it.

The dent shows as a flat spot on the curve of the ring, or as a flattened section of the bar's ridge, and because the highlight on a puffed mariner runs along those curves the flat spot reads as a dull patch. It does not affect the strength of the bracelet.

A flat mariner of the same width takes the same knock as a scratch on a polished plate, which polishes out, at the cost of noticeably more weight. For a bracelet worn at a desk daily, the flat form is the sturdier choice.

Less than its open links might suggest. The frames of a mariner are smooth on the outside and the bars sit inside the outline of the oval, so a woven cuff slides over the bracelet without finding an edge to catch on.

Knitwear is different. A loose knit pressed against the bracelet can push a loop of yarn into a window, where it catches on the bar, and pulling the sleeve away then draws the thread. Under a knitted sleeve a mariner is better worn against the skin with the sleeve over it.

A puffed mariner, with its rounded frames, passes under a cuff more easily than a flat one, whose thin polished edges can press into a tight cuff. Either form is comfortable worn over a cuff rather than under it.

On the bars. The bar is the part of each link that stands proud, on a puffed mariner as a ridge and on a flat mariner as the strip that the skin presses against, and it is the part that meets desks and sleeves. The bars on the underside of the wrist polish bright first.

The links beside the clasp loosen before the others, because that is where the bracelet is handled every day, and the single link on each side of the wrist where the row turns edge-on rubs against its neighbours more than the rest.

None of this is damage. A jeweller's polish evens the finish across the frames and bars, and a link that has loosened at the clasp is closed and resoldered in a few minutes.