Don't Know Much About History

I used to think I disliked history.

Sitting in a classroom listening to a lecture about distant events and unfamiliar names never held much appeal for me. History felt like a bitter vegetable—something to be tolerated long enough to pass a test, then quickly forgotten. For years I believed history simply wasn’t for me.

Only much later did I realize it wasn’t history I disliked at all. It was the way it was being taught.

I grew up in New Orleans, a city where history isn’t confined to textbooks. It lives in food, music, architecture, and the stories passed across dinner tables. There, history unfolds through lived experience—through family memories, traditions, and the layers of culture woven into the city itself.

As a child, one moment in particular captured my imagination. In 1977, the New Orleans Museum of Art hosted the legendary Tutankhamun exhibition. I remember begging my parents to take me. For reasons I can no longer recall, I didn’t make the trip—but my parents did, and they returned with slide carousels, pamphlets, and souvenirs from the exhibition.

I spent hours studying them.

What fascinated me most was the jewelry.

Even then, I sensed that jewelry carried something more than beauty. It carried meaning.

During college, I participated in an archaeological dig and discovered something profound: history can be learned from the earth itself. A fragment of pottery, a layer of soil, a small artifact—all of it contained clues about lives once lived.

As I grew older, museums became my classrooms. I sought them out wherever I traveled—from New York to London—learning history not from lectures, but from objects: a fragment of sculpture, a painting, a stamp, a piece of jewelry worn by someone centuries before me.

Each object felt like a story waiting to be uncovered.

These tactile encounters brought history to life in a way no textbook ever had.

And yet, I still believed I disliked history.

Until I discovered love tokens.

A discovery in my jewelry journey - an encounter felt almost accidental—perhaps even destined. Love tokens, antique coins hand-engraved and exchanged during the Victorian era, immediately captivated me. They were beautiful, mysterious, and deeply personal.

But what struck me most was the realization that these objects were not simply decorative—they were intimate artifacts of human connection.

At the time, very few people were using love tokens in contemporary jewelry, certainly not on the scale I imagined they deserved. Too many were sitting forgotten in safes or destined for the meltdown pile.

It felt impossible to let that happen.

I began collecting them with the intention of bringing them back into the world—transforming these historic objects into modern heirlooms while preserving the stories they carried.

At first, I was drawn primarily to the decorative engravings on their surfaces. The artistry alone was extraordinary. But during one of my early trunk shows, collectors began asking questions about the coins themselves—the host coins that existed long before they were engraved.

Their curiosity led me down an unexpected path.

I began researching Victorian currency and quickly discovered that even the coins themselves held fascinating histories. Their mintages were often shaped by political upheaval, economic shifts, and global events such as the gold rush. Some came from countries that no longer exist.

In other words, even before they became love tokens, they were already pieces of history.

Eventually my attention returned to the engravings—the deeply personal stories etched onto their surfaces. Initials, names, and nicknames sometimes revealed little, but the imagery often spoke volumes about Victorian culture and sentiment.

One love token in my collection bears a single engraved word: Chocolate.

Today we hardly pause to consider chocolate’s presence in everyday life. It sits casually at gas stations and grocery stores, readily available to anyone who wants it. But during the Victorian era, chocolate was a luxury enjoyed primarily by the wealthy.

Only with the Industrial Revolution—when advances in manufacturing dramatically lowered production costs—did chocolate become accessible to a wider public.

For someone encountering chocolate for the first time, the experience must have been extraordinary. It is easy to imagine the delight, the sense of novelty and indulgence.

And perhaps that moment of joy was meaningful enough to commemorate—by engraving the word onto a coin and transforming it into a love token.

This is what fascinates me most about these objects.

Each love token carries a story—sometimes obvious, sometimes mysterious, sometimes forever lost to time. But even when the full narrative remains unknown, the sentiment remains palpable.

Through Heavenly Vices, my goal is to preserve these stories and allow them to continue evolving. By transforming Victorian love tokens into contemporary jewelry, these artifacts return to their original purpose: to be worn, shared, and cherished.

Because jewelry has always been more than adornment.

It is how we carry our stories.

And sometimes, all it takes is a small engraved coin to remind us that history is not something distant and abstract.

It is something deeply human.

And deeply personal.