Jewellery has a proud history in film - from the suggestive anklet of femme fatale Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity to the recent Girl With the Pearl Earring. Over the coming months Mochishop will take a look across cinematic history to assess the contribution made by jewellery to film.
We don't automatically associate a thimble as an item of jewellery [jewelry]. It is, after all, a protective shield worn when sewing. However, thimbles have been made with a variety of gemstones including diamond, agate and amber. Those who collect thimbles are known as digitabulists.
It was in the 1996 romantic tragedy, The English Patient starring Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott-Thomas, that the thimble was actually used as jewellery. In the heart-rending scene where Fiennes' character Almasy carries Scott-Thomas' character Katherine from a plane wreckage, with his gift of a saffron-filled thimble worn as a necklace around her neck.
Only at the ending of the film, as Katherine died, did Almasy learn that his lover had always kept his gift, always worn it as a token of their illicit and foredoomed love.
"You're wearing the thimble."
"Of course, you idiot. I always wear it; I've always worn it; I've always loved you."
