Advertorial · Holiday Edition

Yesterday | Advertorial | Helen Marsh

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

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

Rowena Tilsley (71) at the bench by her workshop window on Vyse Street. These are the last calendars she will ever make.

Birmingham, November. A fine drizzle hangs over the canal, and the red-brick streets of the Jewellery Quarter shine wet under the lamps. Inside the narrow workshop between a watch repairer and a little café, 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 5p coin, and a stack of flat little boxes with the number 24 on the front. Her father opened the workshop in 1958, and Rowena has sat at this bench almost every morning since 1980. This year, she is counting the mornings she has left.

“Last spring the consultant at the eye hospital 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 simply 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 autumn of 1998 the workshop had a quiet year, and Rowena’s daughter Clare, then nine, wanted an advent calendar like the other girls at school had. “The ones in the shops were cardboard and cheap chocolate,” Rowena 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 workshop asking for one. The year after, forty. By the 2000s the calendar had become a Jewellery Quarter tradition: around 250 every year, collected at the counter, never posted. Rowena 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 kettle has even boiled.

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 Rowena’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 Rowena has always told her customers: you don’t have to wait for the 1st of December. “Start the morning it arrives. 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, Rowena keeps a pile of spiral notebooks. Every November since 1998, she has written down the name of every family that collected a calendar. She opens one from 2001 and runs her finger down the page. “Here – the Doherty 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. Rowena 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 Vyse Street. Every piece in these calendars was made at the bench out front – and when they’re gone, there will be no more.

Why there won’t be a 30th calendar

On Saturday, 12 December, Rowena 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 workshop. Her daughter Clare is a nurse in Worcester, her granddaughter Tamsin (23) has plans of her own – nobody wants to take over the bench. “When I started, there was a little workshop in nearly every building on this street,” Rowena says. “Now most of them are gone, 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 winter. 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 Birmingham, 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 table on a dark morning.”

The idea came from Tamsin, who now does the packing and posting until the last box is gone. “Tamsin said, Nan, there are women in Cornwall and Scotland who would love this, and they’ll never come to the Jewellery Quarter,” Rowena 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 Rowena’s calendar:

Door by door: Rowena 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”

Denise W. (56) from Sutton Coldfield has collected a Tilsley calendar at the counter every year since 2004. This year she posted one to her daughter Lucy, who has just moved to Bristol for her first job. “It’s her first Christmas away from home,” Denise 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 Rowena’s calendar?

Rowena’s jewellery advent calendar is only available through County Craft, an online shop that works with small, independent makers. Tamsin looks after Rowena’s corner of the shop and packs every order. Only there will you get the original calendars made at the bench on Vyse Street. Lookalike jewellery calendars from mass production have started to appear 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,” Rowena says, and lays a finished box on the pile. “After that, I’m going to learn to enjoy Christmas from the other side of the counter.” She looks out at the wet street for a long moment. “Twenty-nine Novembers. That’s a lot of little doors.”

If you would like one of the original calendars from Rowena’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 workshop closes, but only for as long as the last boxes last.

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

Our verdict

Rowena’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 the Jewellery Quarter in it – thought through, carefully filled, and gone once the last box leaves the back room. Thank you, Rowena!

Readers’ first doors

Photos sent in by readers.