Fist fulla Elvis

In my never-ending quest to cover my entire body – or at least my entire hands – with silver, I’ve acquired a couple more rings.

And again, these are due to the generosity and genius of my friend Julian Lamb of Ruby Crush; Julian, I hope you’re selling some of these, because I love them.

So first, this one – which is mine all mine – and then the other, which, alas, I must give back.

(click for a bigger view)

This is the big brother to my first Ruby Crush ring, and like that, it is a thing of exquisite workmanship. Julian’s a true artist. This one, though, is special. Not just special as in ‘it looks like a wild screaming lunatic’, though it does, and that alone makes it stand out in a field of crazy-lookin’ silver skulls. But it’s also special in that Julian – again, a gesture of generosity – carved my name into the skull in elegant old-english characters. I don’t think the photos above really do it justice, it’s hard to photograph silver with a little hand-held digital snapshot camera. The lettering, though, is just stunning. I’m not sure if he did this by hand, or if he used some sort of stamp, but whatever he did, it looks great. Honestly, I’ve not even worn this ring though I’ve hard it nearly a month. It somehow seems too good to wear and fuck up. Because that’s who I am, as soon as I put it on, it’s gonna take abuse.

Julian’s a truly gifted man; I’m hoping some of you skull collectors order pieces from him. He’s also a hell of a nice guy.

But wait, there’s more.

In addition to the gift of the above ring, Julian sent me this – which, alas, I must return – to write a review of.

And I find myself rendered speechless by it. So let the picture tell the story.

(again, click for full view)

And you know, this song goes through my head:

     Hey megalomaniac
     You’re not Jesus
     Yeah, you’re no fucking Elvis
     Special, as you know yourself, maniac
     Step down

I may be no fucking Jesus, but this is sure fucking Elvis.

Again, my pictures don’t really do it justice, though they show how goddamned big this ring is. It’s huge; the tip of Elvis’ nose sticks up almost a half-inch from my hand, and the very-very-pointy collar covers my ring finger way past my first knuckle.

In practice, this ain’t a ring you could work in, not a ring you could do much in. Though I imagine it’d leave some bitchin’ bruises and you KNOW that pointy collar would fuck someone up pretty good.

This is where you get close to the line; jewelry vs. wearable sculpture. There are those pieces that are so elaborately constructed that you can’t really do anything with them on, and you certainly can’t wear them every day, but which are art in the true sense of the word and should be, when not worn, on display somewhere.

The thing with this ring, aside from it’s detail (the ears, nose, the tiny hairs in the side-burns), is that it completely captures Elvis. Like him, hate him, whatever, it really, really looks like Elvis. Like Julian’s Jimi Hendrix ring (which I’ve seen only on Julian’s site), it gets the feel of who the man is, or at least how we imagine them in an idolized state.

I can well imagine Julain taking commisions for such things; I can see a Curt Cobain ring, a John Lennon ring, a Jim Morrison ring. I can also imagine him doing portrait rings. Imagine a ring with your beloved’s face. Not my bag any more than portrait tattoos arte my bag, but god knows, I know people who’d love it. I don’t know if Julian actually has or will do such things, but I can certainly imagine him doing it, and looking at this Elvis, I think it’d be pretty damned cool.

So here we have it – the Julian Lamb/Ruby Crush fist.