Love in a Jewel

As business origin stories go, Tracy and Joachim van Oostrum the couple behind LOVE IN A JEWEL, have a pretty good one. Long before they started their keepsake jewellery design business it was jewellery that brought them together.

Back in 2013 Joachim was working in a jewellers in Christchurch when Tracy went in with a diamond ring she needed to get sized. They met that day and two years later they were married.

Originally from The Netherlands, Master Jeweller Joachim qualified as a goldsmith when he was just 21 and then went on to work for many top jewellery stores in Amsterdam before moving to New Zealand some ten years later. So when Tracy’s mother passed away and Tracy was struggling with her grief, she asked Joachim to design a jewellery item that would help her keep her mother close. He made her a pendant which contained a small amount of her mother’s ashes.

“Mum was so special to me. It was really hard to let go. But the pendant brought me a lot of comfort, it really helped me and felt very natural,” explains Tracy.

Then they decided it would be meaningful for Tracy’s young nieces to have a memory of their Nana. So the couple came up with the idea of scanning handwriting from the handmade birthday cards Tracy’s Mum used to make for her granddaughters. That handwriting was resized and sealed in pendants for the girls to wear – keeping their Nana’s love with them.

From there the idea for LOVE IN A JEWEL was born. Since then their range has expanded from pendants to charms for bracelets, rings and even cufflinks. They have created jewellery for customers around New Zealand and all over the world.

Whatever the piece - the process for creating each LOVE IN A JEWEL is highly personalised. The item to be used in the jewellery, be that ashes or a handwritten note, are sent to Tracy and Joachim. Tracy photographs any notes so that the recipient is presented with an image of the full note. Then she passes on the note to Joachim and requests what word or letters should be showing in the final folded version put into the jewel. Joachim then does some clever origami style folding and inserts the note with tweezers and great care into the required jewellery design, before closing it up. Jewellery is then packed by hand and even this is done on an old, wooden trestle table that Tracy’s father made for her mother.

But the business side of things has had its challenges – in the early days Tracy would work on the business from her laptop set up on an ironing board squeezed in the hallway of their home. When they first went to a jewellery trade show in 2017 in Sydney, they felt out of their depth. “We just didn’t know how to sell what we had,” explains Tracy. “It was so overwhelming.”

It worked out though and now the couple both work full-time on the business and have over a dozen stockists around New Zealand.

And both Tracy and Joachim love their work – the idea of helping others to treasure those meaningful moments. “It can be very emotional,” says Tracy. But knowing that their jewellery will make someone happy is what keeps them working. At the very beginning they ordered 500 LOVE IN A JEWEL boxes to be made to deliver the jewellery to customers, so that it would feel beautiful and unique from the moment they held it. “What if we only sell three?” Tracy asked Joachim after they had spent their savings. “Well then we’ll have made three people happy,” was his reply.

“This business is more heart than anything,” says Tracy. “It’s real love inside jewellery, forever. It really feels special to make these for people and we couldn’t think of a better way to spend our days. It’s a dream come true when see notes written to mums, daughters, nanas, dads, grandchildren. And it’s a beautiful tribute to my lovely Mum and Dad.”