This piece is part of the Royal College of Art Visiting Artists Collection. Every year from 1987 to 2006, while David Watkins was Professor of Goldsmithing, Silversmithing, Metalwork and Jewellery at the RCA, he invited four jewellers and silversmiths from outside Britain to give a week-long masterclass. The artists brought diverse skills, aesthetics and approaches. The first call on their time was to interact closely with the students. In addition, although concentrating on their teaching and working in an unfamiliar studio, each artist generously made an object for the RCA's collection. The Royal College of Art Visiting Artists Collection, now transferred to the V&A, is a major document of international contemporary jewellery, a tribute both to the artists and to the vibrancy of the RCA as a teaching institution.

The Austrian jeweller Wolfgang Rahs was born in 1952. He has described how for this pendant he took one ounce of fine gold which he alloyed and then cast into a cut-away section of an old school bench. The profile of the pendant was then made by filing both the gold and the surrounding wood in one process - leaving a shaped wooden board into which the gold pendant fits exactly. The uniting of these two diverse elements - an old piece of furniture and a precious metal - gave Rahs an additional, underlying satisfaction in the piece.