Lost Originals; Alchemy vintage classics
On 1st January 2027, Alchemy will begin its celebration of 50 years since its inception, in 1977.
With the originators still actively at the helm and passionately keen on continuing to lead the way in alternative, extraordinary design, this year of 2025 has seen Alchemy Gothic surpass its 1,000th pendant, or neckwear design.
Since the early days, when creating the original model for the first of our pewter alternative jewellery pieces, the P1. Rieder’s Axe, which was an exciting, but nervously tentative time, we now, slightly more confidently design, develop and produce our next generation of collections with the belief and pride of experience. However, in those formative years we had no idea that we’d still be creating original alternative jewellery designs, and even accessories in leather and metal and treasures in pewter, glass and wood, etc, five decades later, and we paid little heed to our future legacy.
We would save some of these items for our personal pleasure, but then eventually we established the Alchemy 1977 Archive with our conscious policy of preserving the first few production samples of each new creation for posterity. However, following our move of workshops in 2015 to the 18th century building of Saint Mary’s Mill, sadly we have found that some of our earliest, pre-2011 pieces have been lost from our collection .
This set us thinking… even from the very beginning we know that at least several hundred of each piece of jewellery was sold, as well as many pieces of The Treasury, etc, and so therefore, would there be any early Alchemy admirers out there who still had their original items of vintage, pre-2011 Alchemy? If so, perhaps they could send us some pictures and tell us all of their own personal related stories?
The Alchemy Gothic website has a virtual Museum of Vintage Alchemy in which you can browse through everything that was ever made for the collection. Maybe you can identify your own favourite pieces in there?
We would love to hear from you and to discover your own early Alchemy originals, and to hear about who you were back then and what you were up to.
And with your permission, we’d like to share these stories and pictures on the Alchemy Gothic website with our many loyal fans of today?
Please get in touch, on the Alchemy Blog, or on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook; we’ll look forward to your findings and your memories!