How I unearthed my clan jewels

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The jeweller Ellis Mhairi Cameron has always been captivated by the Scottish rural landscape in which she grew up. The scudding, ever-changing skies and eroding land had worked their way into her previous collections even before last year, when she discovered a five-century-old treasure hoard on her family’s ancient farm.

The Cameron clan has lived on the same site in Oban, the unofficial capital of the West Highlands, since 1502. Cameron grew up with her parents nearby and spent much of her childhood running in and out of the farm. In 2022, a set of standing stones was uncovered when an area of long-overgrown land was cleared. Historic Environment Scotland confirmed them to be significant and suggested that the family hire some metal detectors. So, on a rainy day in April, Cameron and two detectorists struck, if not gold, then certainly a rich vein of history: ancient artefacts that have gone on to inspire Legacy, Cameron’s latest collection of fine jewellery.

A 16th-century clan brooch inscribed with “We Come Bearing Weapons” in Gaelic

A locket dating from c1520 found on Cameron’s farm land

“We all just lost it a little bit, but I wish we’d had the foresight to film it all,” says Cameron of the find. “But in all honesty we thought we’d go out there and find a 20p coin or an old key.” In fact, the very first find was a finger-sized apothecary pot, corroded to green but still almost completely intact, once used for weighing and measuring ingredients and verified by Treasure Trove, a Scottish archaeological organisation, as dating back to 1503.

There followed a locket, a necklace and a pin. “I’m not sure my ancestors were rich enough to have all these different objects,” Cameron says. “But because it’s only five minutes to the nearest part of the coast, we might have been a trading area.” One object spikes the family fiercely into the territory – a clan brooch that would have belonged to the Camerons’ chief, carved with the image of an arm brandishing a spear and a message in Gaelic: “We come bearing weapons.”

An early 17th-century necklace unearthed by Cameron

A brooch from the 1600s

“The Campbells, the Camerons and the MacDonalds were always doing terrible things to each other,” says Cameron. “I’m sure it was survival of the fittest, but I don’t get the impression my ancestors were the nicest people. It was like Game of Thrones. There are stories about us inviting the MacDonalds over under the pretence of marriage and and just slaughtering them – a literal Red Wedding.”

Amidst the peat, bog and mess, there was a glimmer, a sparkle

No matter how menacing, the discovery was particularly meaningful for Cameron, who studied jewellery and silversmithing at the Glasgow School of Art, before completing an MA in jewellery design at Central Saint Martins in London, where she is now based. “When it’s your relatives, it does get you thinking about your place in this land. We had such an incredibly immersive moment when all these things came out.” Legacy is a response to that moment. “I never want to create something that looks like you’ve ripped off ancient jewellery, but I wanted to make pieces that had that sense of discovery to them, as if they’d been buried,” she says. “I wanted to capture that moment in April when rain poured down and, amidst the peat, bog and mess, there was a glimmer, a sparkle.”

The artefacts and their detailing sent her imagination flying into the realms of “what if?”. “The jewellery pieces all have that sense of time and erosion, but I started to think, ‘What might this one have looked like? Or what if that one had been encrusted with diamonds?’”

Diamonds are a significant feature within the collection of necklaces, earrings and rings. Icy-white antique-cut and baguettes – which have some resemblance to standing stones and are sometimes set upside down to reflect the light with a more rainy glimmer – nestle amid textured molten-gold, conveying that sense of historic handcraft. “If I’d used brilliant-cut or stones that had been cut more recently, it wouldn’t have the same effect,” Cameron says. “You might still have a pretty ring, but it wouldn’t have the same narrative [or] feeling.”

Ellis Mhairi Cameron gold and champagne-diamond multistack ring, POA

Gold and baguette-diamond X Lemon hoop earrings, £7,495

Gold and diamond X OOAK band, £7,495

Gold and diamond X OOAK Legacy cocktail ring, £7,995

The X OOAK Legacy cocktail ring (£7,995) is a medieval statement of a jewel. Stacked with the X OOAK white diamond scatter band (£7,495) – a V-shaped crown with the quality of dripping candlewax – it could feasibly start a clan set-to. The lemon baguette hoops (£7,495) and the totem-stack of stones in the pendant necklaces (from £1,995) are as noble as they are dramatic.

Cameron, who works from a studio at The Goldsmiths’ Centre in London, will keep adding to Legacy and create bespoke pieces based on its designs. She already has an international fanbase, particularly in the US, where customers are responding to the brand’s sense of Scottish heritage.

Now her family’s history will live on in her jewels. “What truly fascinates me about the objects we unearthed is the passage of time,” she says. “They’ve been witnesses to countless lives and moments throughout the centuries.” The mystery of whether the artefacts belonged to her ancestors or to those who invaded their lands, she says, still lingers. But now she has created a hoard that is pure Clan Cameron.