Doing Black Friday Differently

Shutter Jewellery has never taken part in the Black Friday discount frenzy. The prices you see on this site have been carefully calculated to make them as fair and affordable as possible all year round, and never inflated with the intention of slashing them later.

Once again I’ll be marking the day by doing some good instead. Shutter Jewellery has made a donation to a local charity – The Swan Sanctuary.

Swans on the Thames 

The Swan Sanctuary

Dorothy Beeson MBE, began the sanctuary from her home in nearby Egham back in the 1980s. Since 2005, the sanctuary has been based in Shepperton, just across the river from us, and is run entirely on donations and sponsorship.

Every year the sanctuary save countless swans from injuries caused from overhead power cables, fishing lines, pollution and litter, amongst other threats. They are on call 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, providing emergency treatment and taking birds in, operating if necessary, and letting them recover at the sanctuary before releasing them back to their natural habitat.

A young swan with a hook in it's beak that the Swan Sanctuary rescued outside the studio at Anglers Wharf, Walton-on-Thames. Oct 2019

Why the Swan Sanctuary?

It’s hard to pick from all the amazing charities our there looking after nature. However, one of most heartbreaking things I’ve seen this year is the footage of birds succumbing to avian flu. Yet another very dangerous threat to our beautiful swans and our birds need that helping hand more than ever.

The river is the best thing about where I live. The amount of wildlife you see  even on a short walk along the Thames is amazing. I regularly see heron, cormorants, mandarin ducks, egyptian geese, canada geese, greylag geese, mallards, tufted ducks, gulls, the occasional gorgeous black swan and of course, lots of beautiful mute swans – I think, one of the most impressive animals of them all.

Many, like me, who love nothing more than being by the river, are very grateful for having such a dedicated team of people looking out for the birds on the river that bring us so much joy every day.

To read more about the Swan Sanctuary, their work, what to feed swans, how you can help plus the answers to every other possible question you could have about swans see the Swan Sanctuary website. 

Make a Donation here.

Love Swans? See the Swan jewellery pieces, using an image taken in Walton-on-Thames.

Why not trees this year?

You might remember, last year Shutter Jewellery funded the planting of 500 trees to mark as a stance against Black Friday and a tree has been planted for every order over £45 since. From today, the threshold for this is being lowered and there will now be a tree planted for every order over £30. See our Ecologi forest for details on their work and how our trees are doing.