Ruth Tomlinson is a jewellery designer and maker working typically in precious materials. Her work derives from close observation of the world around her and reflects her love of nature and her sensitivity to texture and colour. She trained initially in 3D design at Manchester Metropolitan University, then in jewellery at the Royal College of Art, London.

Her ‘Time Capsule’ ring brings together unlikely treasures gleaned along the Thames foreshore, found when she became fascinated by mudlarking during the COVID-19 lockdown. It is set with tiny beads of possibly Roman date, a panel of polished shell - perhaps an offcut from the button trade, a still-sharp shard of glass, and the spiralling shell of a tiny water snail.

It was made as part of a series of four unique rings each incorporating different found objects. Titled ‘OffeRings’, the intention was that the four would be thrown back into the Thames for future mudlarks perhaps to find. A romantic and whimsical gesture devised by Ruth to celebrate her twenty years as a London jeweller, it was documented in the Financial Times’s ‘How to Spend It’ magazine of 22 October 2021. The three other rings were indeed cast into the Thames, tied to flint hagstone weights; ‘Time Capsule’ was preserved as a reference point for the others and as a creative and individual response to COVID-19.

The ring evokes the constant human presence along the river, the debris of centuries, and London’s tidal hinterland with its ever-present ebb and flow. It speaks also of transformation and re-purposing the lost, the discarded and the overlooked.