Headstone Skull/Portrait Necklace P425

1993 was a significant year. Nirvana was everywhere, the goth underground was doing its own thing regardless, and Alchemy Gothic was already producing pieces like this one, which has now outlasted most of what was considered cutting edge back then.

The Headstone Skull/Portrait Necklace is built around a spinning faux-onyx centre that reveals two faces of the same coin: life and death rendered in classic memento mori tradition. It's the kind of dark aesthetic object that gothic and alternative subcultures have always understood intuitively, that mortality isn't morbid, it's honest. The spinning mechanism gives it a kinetic quality that lifts it beyond static jewellery into something you actually interact with. Thirty-plus years in and this design still pulls its weight.

Made from English pewter by Alchemy England, this is a piece with genuine history in the alternative and gothic jewellery world. Arrives on a chain, ready to wear.