R INGS FOR REMEMBRANCE

For years Amy Strickland rarely wore jewelry. Considering her heavily ringed fingers and ever-present jangle of bracelets, that’s hard to believe now.

The Oak Cliff resident collects unique turquoise and silver jewelry, and she has loads of it.

Her interest in jewelry started, though, with antique mourning rings. The rings, produced between the 1920s-1950s, were mementos to honor loved ones who had died.

“I’m kind of obsessed with how people deal with death,” she says. “It’s not morbid. It’s a sweet thing that people did to remember someone.”

Most of the rings are made of early plastics, Bakelite or celluloid, and they hold portraits or sometimes, hair. Strickland also has about 18 mourning rings that are made of silver in the Art Deco style.

Not all of them commemorate the dead. Some are “sweetheart rings,” to remind the wearer of his or her beau. And some of them are “prison rings,” fashioned out of Bakelite toothbrushes behind bars.

“I have one that’s more crudely made, and it’s his mug shot with the lines behind his head,” she says.

Since she started collecting them seven or eight years ago, Strickland has amassed about 100 rings. She used to buy them at flea markets for no more than $60, typically. And some she bought on eBay for $20 or so.

Now they’re harder to find and can fetch $400 or more.

She’s so into the rings that she’s tried to make her own, using a silver ring kit and photos of her grandparents.

“If there was a way I could bring it back, I would,” she says.

It’s her love of old photographs and the stories behind antiques that fueled the obsession.

“I hate that people would not pass that down,” she says. “That would be the thing I would most want in the world. I guess there was no family left who wanted them.”

She’s bought mourning rings where the photos have faded completely because she still feels for the objects and doesn’t want them to be unappreciated.

Now she only buys the very rare ones, like the one of a little boy with butterfly wings inside the ring and one with a red-white-and-blue heart.

Sometimes she gives them away to friends who really fall in love with one. And she usually raffles one off at her annual Christmas party.

“I like people to celebrate death, and I think we’ve lost that now,” she says. “We didn’t take everything for granted, and people did nice things for each other.”