Matinicus Island Chocolate Bracelet, 14K yellow Gold

Matinicus Chocolate Bracelet

As I look back 30 years, I have a hard time imagining how in the olden days we ever arranged for four days on the island. I was pre-cellphone, and pre-internet. Truth I don’t remember how we arranged our stay at the Tucanuk Lodge on Matinicus Island. I do remember the flight out from Owl’s Head airport in a small single engine plane.

My son and my mission was to hike the perimeter of the island. Matinicus is one of the largest year round lobstering island off the coast of Maine. The Matinicus International Jetport is a long sloping grass field ending at a rocky cove on the Northwest shore of the Island. There was a sign over the door of the one room wooden building that said Matinicus International Jetport.

We were met at the jetport by the mail lady in a station wagon. She was there to accept incoming mail and to deliver arriving passengers to their destination on Island. She knew where we’re going and she said she would take us along on her deliveries. We toured half the island. It took about 45 minutes to get to our destination.

Bill Hodley was the owner of the lodge. He explained our room came with breakfast and supper and one supper meal during our stay was lobster. Matinicus is remote. It had one gravel road down the middle of the island and a few side roads. The island was essentially flat with a small village and harbor on its east side.

The first morning we started our hike on the east side just below the village our mission was search the island for interesting Maine coast rock for a new bracelet we were intending to make. Colors of rock and textures were what we’re most interested in.

When on an exploratory mission we were a cross between geologists and archaeologists while having the consciousness of a jeweler. I remember little about the east shore. At the southeastern end of the Island we found a broad sand beach and I encountered something I’d never seen before… a lavender rock.

The month was September. It was overcast. The skies were grey. Air temperature was in the high 50’s low 60’s, no wind. Day two we did the west shore of the island.  The west shore was more interesting the cliffs and rocks were more sculptural, what one might imagine as the classic Maine coast. The going was slow because of the climbing it was granite, basalt dikes and the lavender stones which we collected.

I remember day 3 late afternoon on the north end of the west shore. We were on a cobble beach at high tide and the sun broke through the clouds and the ocean glittered with light. It was beautiful. It was the only time on Matinicus we saw the sun. Morning of day 4 we were at the north end of the island. The tide was low we scrambled out over the stretch of shore rock at the foot of this jetport runway. We collected more lavender rock which we brought up to the one room terminal building. We did find a 70 pound big lavender rock which looked to big to easily move. I decided to mark it to see if we could make a deal with Bill Hodley. We found sections of colored lobster trap rope up on the beach and tucked them under the rock, fanning out like a spider web. It was beautiful and clearly marked that rock out of the 1000’s of rock in the intertidal zone.

We cut a deal with Bill. He would secure the rock bring it up to the terminal. Bill had a typewriter that needed fixing. Bill avoided the mainland and never left his island. We’d make arrangements to fly out this big rock and the typewriter get it repaired and return it to the island.

Later that day before we flew back to the mainland the pilot said what we had collected for rock and our weight was too much for the size of his plane. We said that was fine and we left 200 pounds of lavender rock at the airport for a later fly out.

When we got back to Portland we tested the lavender rock. We cut and polished it, at first we were disappointed because the color shifted from lavender to dark brown. We were working on a new bracelet with new stones to be called the Maine Island Bracelet. Which would have beach stones from Maine islands. Lavender seemed like it would have been a winning color. As we laid our 8 new stones out, we realized this dark brown stone was 80% pure chocolate color. We proceeded with our island bracelet.

In the months that followed we came across an old bracelet style from the 1960’s We loved it and built another bracelet with every other link to have a specially cut chocolate stone. We called this special bracelet our Matinicus Island Chocolate Temptation Bracelet.

This was the 1990’s and although the internet and websites had just been invented we weren’t prepared to offer this as a product to the world. After showing for a couple of years to make room in our show case we put this bracelet into our archival collection.

As we uncover treasures in our archives we are telling the full story for email and posting now on our website.

Why We Love This Piece

This is seven links of totally non-fattening chocolate with gold links in between. Chocolate link is curvy, smooth, of a dark chocolate color interspaced with gold. Do not consider buying this bracelet unless you’re a super careful person. The gold is virtually indestructible. The chocolate links if dropped on a tile floor are likely to break and there is no answer for repair.

The bracelet is bold. It fits a normal sized wrist. It will be a dramatic accessory like a fine Russian sable coat only politically correct and totally non-fattening. There is only one in the world and this is it.

We priced it in 1998 at $6,850

We’re selling this for $4,850

Replacement* Value Today $10,000

*This is a one of a kind and cannot be replaced