Reflecting Personality in the Form of Charms

On vacation in the Maldives as a teenager in 2018, George Inaki Root saw baby turtles hatch and decided to create a tiny turtle charm as part of the inaugural collection he designed for Milamore, the fine jewelry brand he founded in 2019.

“Turtles represent longevity and wealth in Japanese culture,” Mr. Inaki Root, 36, who lives and works in New York, said recently during a video call from Hong Kong, where he was holding sales meetings. So he made sure to include a turtle charm, in recycled 18-karat yellow gold with a shell flashing with brilliant- and baguette-cut diamonds ($11,520).

Today, that turtle is joined by 27 other charms as well as chains, earrings and other items, all handmade in Japan, where he grew up.

From little puzzle pieces engraved with clients’ initials and their translation in Braille using diamonds to calligraphy-like zodiac charms, his charms start at $600. Each piece is sold individually for clients to wear as they wish, perhaps on one of his Duo chains, a series of yellow and white gold necklaces inspired by antique pocket-watch chains.

“I could switch my charms up all the time, but I’m lazy,” he said of his own charm wardrobe, worn more often than not on one of his chains over a vest or a shirt unbuttoned to the sternum. “I’ll change them around every few weeks, but I almost always wear my emerald charm, a zodiac one, and a vintage one.”

He added that “charms are a fascinating jewelry item because they reflect a person’s character and personality, which is why they appeal to people of any gender.”

The personal charm collection of the Montreal-born designer Pippa Small, 55, could be heard one recent afternoon before she appeared from behind a door inside her Notting Hill boutique in London.

Around her neck were at least six chains of various lengths holding more than two dozen of what she refers to as amulets in gold, gemstones and ornamental stones like turquoise and lapis lazuli, which jangled together when she walked, creating a bell-like sound. Ms. Small has worked with several other designers, including Nicole Farhi in 2001, Tom Ford at Gucci in 2002, and Chloé under Phoebe Philo before opening her first shop in 2007 in London.

“I have had a very primal belief about the power of stones and gems all my life,” Ms. Small said. “I strongly believe that the earth holds a powerful energy that is contained in a stone. The charms I wear are gathered over my years of working with communities all over the world.”

These included a gold locket containing snippets of her twin children’s hair and a nine-gemstone charm, both made by artisans in Jaipur, India. There was also a gold seed pod representing life and potential, made by a man she said was named Juancho, with metal that had been panned from the rivers of Chocó, Colombia.

The windows of her fuchsia-painted storefront reveal a cornucopia of jewelry inside, including rough chunks of aquamarine with simple twisted gold wires, lapis lazuli doves, and little gold rabbits for clients to wear alone or en masse.

“In many places people’s beliefs in the powers of symbols are very profound, and they’ve rubbed off on me,” she said, rubbing her gold locket between her fingers. “I would never be without them, they offer a shield of protection and comfort.” While she chatted about her own collection, a customer was busy placing various combinations of amulets on a velvet tray, seemingly as riddled with indecision as a child choosing from an array of candy.

Charms are not a modern concept. Amulet necklaces have been found in the ancient graves of Assyrians and Babylonians, for example. And Queen Victoria had a bracelet made of nine tiny enameled heart-shaped lockets, each one containing the hair of one of her nine children. Charms surged in popularity in the West in the years after World War II: Auction houses and vintage sites still often feature bracelets jangling with tiny metal talismans from the 1950s and ’60s.

Michele Edwards, 61, a Los Angeles dealer of vintage charms, credits her mother’s love of jewelry with her infatuation with charms. “As a child,” she said by phone, “I’d go with her to a little jewelry store in Chicago where I’d be handed a tray of charms to play with while she looked at the ‘important’ jewelry. I have charms I have known my entire life.”

Ms. Edwards has been buying and selling vintage charms “for 13 years, but only seriously for the last eight.”

There is a charm for everyone, she said. The trick is working out what delights or has meaning for the recipient, then searching for something that reflects that. “I had one once of a woman with a head full of curlers,” she said. “I sold it to a hairstylist in the movie industry.”

“One client who has become a friend is obsessed with old movies,” she continued. “The first charm he bought from me was a tiny Oscar statuette, then a little basket with a puppy coming out of it to represent Judy Garland in ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ I’ve sold him at least 10 old-movie-related charms.”

Ms. Edwards doesn’t know all of her clients personally, of course, but she does understand that there is an art to selling charms.

“I had this tiny, signed Cartier pencil-stub charm,” she said. “I couldn’t shift it, but then I posted a picture of it strung on a chain with a little pencil-sharpener charm and it sold immediately.”

At any one time, Ms. Edwards said, she wears at least three chains with individual charms on them, and a longer chain with a “jumble”: a mix of at least a dozen charms clustered together.

In Florida, Louise Erhard, 37, formerly worked in fine art and now makes a living selling handmade charms. She draws cartoonish illustrations onto tiny plastic canvases that she encases in resin, frames in 18-karat gold or sterling silver, and coats again in resin for durability. Her whimsical drawings of animals and fairies, toys, pets and, occasionally a celebrity (she said the singer Erykah Badu had commissioned a self-portrait charm with the words “unfollow me”), are sold on Etsy, under the handle Past Preference.

“I think people love charms that remind them of their childhoods,” she said in a video interview.

“It has been an incredibly healing process for me, remembering what I loved as a kid.”