EARRINGS & PAT
Paco was still at university when his father died. Like his father he trained as a doctor but his mother, determined that his life be more stable than hers, encouraged him to pursue a more lucrative career in dentistry. He spent his days squinting at x-rays, pacifying children and fitting the people of Valladolid with gold crowns. Thirty years later his aging patients returned, asking for the gold to be replaced with porcelain. The gold itself hadn’t corroded but most of the cement that had held the crowns in place had dissolved away. As Paco extracted the crowns he would offer the gold caps to his patients. They would normally wave them away, what use would they have of an old gold tooth? So his collection grew and by the mid 90s, when his daughter moved to London, the little pouch he’d stored them in was a satisfying weight. Rosa, Pat’s mother, told her about an idea she’d had in a dream and the next time Pat went home to Spain Rosa had a present for her – a pair of earrings, soft enough to bend, made from 30 years’ worth of 24 carat crowns.
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