I first heard about chaney from a friend who had recently moved to St. Croix, USVI. Then on my first visit she took me on a ‘chaney hunt’ and I was addicted; both to the smooth, rounded pieces of broken china and to the hunt itself.

As I became more interested, a world of myth and legend opened up to me about the stuff. From the most awe inspiring – that the pieces of china broken in the attacks on plantation houses during the slave rebellions and the later ‘Fireburn’ labor rebellion of 1878 became symbols of the fight for freedom – to the more simple one told to me by local jeweler Whealan Massicott at IB Designs (my vote for the most talented creator of chaney jewelry) – that local children used pieces of broken china as play money in their games (hence the name, a combination of ‘china’ and ‘money’).

Although Whealan’s simpler explanation is probably the one closer to the truth, the more symbolic one speaks to the Caribbean pirate in my soul; and I proudly wear my chaney jewelry as a symbol of my solidarity with the fight for freedom for all people – even if it is such a symbol only to me!

Regardless of the history, or how the little pieces of broken plates and cups make it in into the ocean around St. Croix, nothing adds to the excitement of my snorkeling and diving experiences around the island more than finding a piece of the stuff – it’s rough edges smoothed and rounded by years of tumbling in the sand.

Of course, the best is finding a complete pattern of a flower, or animal or something similar on a centuries old piece of the finest Danish china; but I’m not sure that finding an old piece of heavy white, or even crockery brown, from a piece that never left the kitchen doesn’t thrill me just as much!

Also, there’s that fascination – like that of finding a smooth, beautiful piece of sea glass – in the fact that the ocean will even take our garbage and do it’s best to turn it into something of beauty. If only man could learn the lesson in that! Although it’s often easier to find chaney in a newly tilled field or the disturbed earth of a St. Croix construction site, I think it’s this fact that makes nothing compare to finding chaney in the sea.

So, whether the chaney I find carries in it’s tiny web-like crazes the hopes and dreams of an exploited laborer, or the simpler ones of children’s games; it carries the hopes and dreams of a world that holds honor and respect for all living things and the world we live in. At least it does for me.