Advertorial · Holiday Edition

Yesterday | Advertorial | Kylie Barton

“My eyes are failing, and nobody wants to take over my bench.” Why a 71-year-old jeweller from Victoria is selling her 24 favourite handmade pieces in one advent calendar – for the first and last time

For 28 years, Raelene Coutts made every ring, star and heart by hand. Now her eyes are failing and nobody wants the family shop – so her 24 favourite designs go into one last calendar.

Raelene Coutts (71) at the bench by her shop window on Lydiard Street. These are the last calendars she will ever make.

Ballarat, November. The first warm northerly is blowing down Lydiard Street, and the door of the narrow shop between the old bank and a little bakery is propped open with a brick. Inside, a brass lamp is burning over a scarred wooden bench. On it: a tray of tiny silver stars and hearts, a coil of fine chain, a row of gold rings no wider than a 5-cent coin, and a stack of flat little boxes with the number 24 on the front. Her father opened the shop in 1958, and Raelene has sat at this bench almost every morning since 1980. This year, she is counting the mornings she has left.

“Back in autumn the eye specialist in Melbourne said the words I was dreading,” she says, and takes off her glasses. “Macular degeneration. The middle of whatever I look at is going soft, like a smudge on a window.” For most people, that means trouble reading the paper. For a jeweller, it means the end. “A jump ring is smaller than a grain of rice. I have to see the gap to close it. Some mornings now I just can’t.”

She has decided to stop before the work gets worse. “I’d rather finish with my best calendar than with one I’m ashamed of,” she says. “Every piece that’s left this bench has always been right. I want the last ones to be right too.”

28 Novembers, more than 7,000 calendars – and it all began with one little girl

The idea was born out of an empty purse. In the spring of 1998 the shop had a quiet year, and Raelene’s daughter Leanne, then nine, wanted an advent calendar like the other girls at school had. “The ones in the shops were cardboard and cheap chocolate that melted before December,” Raelene remembers. “So I sat down at the bench one night and made her 24 little pieces of jewellery instead. I sawed a star out of silver sheet, bent tiny earrings, hammered a ring she could bend to fit. She opened one door every morning before school and wore it to class.”

By Christmas, the other mums knew. The next November, eleven of them came into the shop asking for one. The year after, forty. By the 2000s the calendar had become a Ballarat tradition: around 250 every year, picked up at the counter, never posted. Raelene has done the sums – more than 7,000 calendars in 28 years, more than 168,000 little doors.

Every star is sawn, filed and shaped by hand at the bench – work her eyes won’t manage much longer.

What’s behind the 24 doors

From the outside it’s a flat, sparkling copper-gold box with a heart and the number 24 on the front. Look a little closer and you’ll see 24 small numbered doors cut right into the front – one for every morning until Christmas.

Door number two on a December morning: a small piece of silver or gold before the day heats up.

Inside are 24 pieces, all silver-plated or gold-plated, mixed so that you never know which colour comes next: six fine necklaces with little pendants – a star, two hearts, a dove, an open circle, a bold star – a sparkling solitaire-style ring with a clear stone, four pairs of earrings, from small gold crescents to dangling tree-of-life discs and tiny Christmas trees, and thirteen rings.

The rings are Raelene’s favourite part. Every one of them is open at the back, so it adjusts to any finger with a gentle squeeze. “Nobody has to guess a ring size,” she says. “A grandmother can wear it, a twelve-year-old can wear it. That was the whole point from the beginning.” Some are delicate and plain, some are wavy or braided, one has a tiny gingerbread man sitting on it. “That one,” she smiles, “is always the one people tell me about.”

And there is one more rule Raelene has always told her customers: you don’t have to wait for the 1st of December. “Start the morning it turns up. Twenty-four mornings with something small to look forward to – that’s what it’s for, not the date on the wall.”

“Some families have come back for 25 Christmases”

Under the counter, Raelene keeps a stack of spiral notebooks. Every November since 1998, she has written down the name of every family that picked up a calendar. She opens one from 2001 and runs her finger down the page. “Here – the Kennedy girls. Their mum ordered three that year.” She opens this year’s notebook. “And here they are again. Now they order for their own daughters.”

The secret, she says, isn’t the box. It’s the work at the bench – about twelve hours for every single calendar. Raelene saws the little stars and hearts out of sheet metal, files them into shape, bends every ring around her steel mandrel, polishes each piece, checks every clasp and earring hook under the lamp, and lays it behind its little door herself. “If a clasp is stiff, it doesn’t go in. If a hook is bent, it doesn’t go in. I’d rather throw a piece away than have a little girl find it broken on the 6th of December.”

The back room on Lydiard Street. Every piece in these calendars was made at the bench out the front – and when they’re gone, there won’t be any more.

Why there won’t be a 30th calendar

On Saturday, 12 December, Raelene will polish the last piece, wipe down the bench and switch off the brass lamp. Last winter she asked the family if anyone wanted the shop. Her daughter Leanne is a teacher in Geelong, her granddaughter Shae (22) has plans of her own – nobody wants to take over the bench. “When I started, there were five jewellers on Lydiard Street,” Raelene says. “Now it’s just me, and fewer people come through that door every year. Nobody wants to learn a craft that takes ten years and pays so little. You can’t learn this in one summer. It took me ten years before my hands knew what my eyes were telling them. Now it’s the other way round.”

In the back room, exactly 347 calendars are left – her final collection. Instead of letting them sit, she has made a decision that would have been unthinkable for 28 years: for the first time ever, the calendars are being posted outside Ballarat, and all of them at a clear special price, about half of what she normally asks. “I don’t want them on a shelf when I lock the door,” she says. “I want them on somebody’s kitchen bench first thing in the morning.”

The idea came from Shae, who now does the packing and posting until the last box is gone. “Shae said, Nan, there are women in Perth and Darwin who would love this, and they’ll never come to Ballarat,” Raelene laughs. “I told her I don’t know the first thing about selling on a computer. She said, you fill the doors, I’ll do the rest.”

Why women wait all year for Raelene’s calendar:

Door by door: Raelene lays every piece in herself. If a clasp is stiff or a hook is bent, it doesn’t go in.

What her longtime regulars say

“She rang me after the very first door”

Debbie W. (56) from Creswick has picked up a Coutts calendar at the counter every year since 2004. This year she posted one to her daughter Jess, who has just moved to Brisbane for her first job. “It’s her first Christmas away from home,” Debbie says. “At half six in the morning my phone rang. She was crying and laughing at the same time – door number one was the little star necklace, the same one she got in her first calendar when she was five. She said, Mum, it feels like you’re in my kitchen.”

The first door: for many families, a small morning ritual that lasts all the way to Christmas.

Where can you order Raelene’s calendar?

Raelene’s jewellery advent calendar is only available through County Craft, an online shop that works with small, independent makers. Shae looks after Raelene’s corner of the shop and packs every order. Only there will you get the original calendars made at the bench on Lydiard Street. Lookalike jewellery calendars from mass production have started popping up on Amazon and the big shopping sites, and some even copy the box. What none of them has is a jeweller who made every single piece by hand.

Until 12 December – then the bench lamp goes out

“By the 12th I want every calendar to have a home,” Raelene says, and lays a finished box on the stack. “After that, I’m going to learn to enjoy Christmas from the other side of the counter.” She looks out at the sunny street for a long moment. “Twenty-nine Novembers. That’s a lot of little doors.”

If you’d like one of the original calendars from Raelene’s final collection, don’t leave it too long. With the special price and the Christmas rush, the remaining 347 calendars aren’t expected to last until the 12th. Orders will still go out after the shop closes, but only for as long as the last boxes last.

It’s the last chance to bring a piece of a Ballarat tradition into your own home – before the brass lamp on Lydiard Street goes dark for good.

Our verdict

Raelene’s calendar is the kind of present people remember. It’s 24 small, wearable pieces instead of 24 pieces of chocolate, every piece made by hand by a woman who has done this for almost three decades, and rings that fit every hand in the family.

A present with real heart and a little bit of Lydiard Street in it – thought through, carefully filled, and gone once the last box leaves the back room. Thank you, Raelene!

Readers’ first doors

Photos sent in by readers.