What is a Schmarrn

A Charivari is a chain with things hanging from it. That definition satisfies customs and the insurer; for everything else it falls short. Historically the chain on the Lederhosen was a collection of evidence: teeth of animals you had shot yourself, coins from years you remembered, claws, tusks, a talisman against witches that was not taken off even in the Age of Enlightenment, because one never knows. The chain was read like a curriculum vitae, and as with a CV, what mattered was the order.

What sets the Charivari apart from other jewellery is modularity. A ring is finished. A chain with loops never is. Every loop is a vacancy, and a vacancy is a promise to the future: that something is still to come, that something is still to be shot, inherited or acquired. A full Charivari is therefore worn with a certain melancholy. An empty one with confidence. Both are statements, and both are read.

Every loop is a vacancy, and a vacancy is a promise to the future.

The evidence has shifted. Whoever wears a stag's antlers on Lake Tegernsee today has, as a rule, not shot a stag but bought a plot of land on which one once stood. The antlers remain the right sign. They no longer mean the hunt but proximity to the hunt, and proximity, as every estate agent knows, is the actual asset. This is why we named our collections not after costume regions but after places where money gathers: Tegernsee, Starnberg, Schwabing, Nockherberg. The Kampenwand is a mountain, but a mountain with a car park.

The hanging itself follows a grammar. The middle belongs to the piece you want explained. Outwards the charms become smaller, lighter, more incidental; at the very edge something may hang that looks as if it landed there by chance. It never landed there by chance. Whoever hangs a beer mug next to an edelweiss says something about their relationship to altitude; whoever hangs a Weißwurst next to an ignition key says something about their relationship to time. Our configurator allows both. It also allows eleven beer mats. We tested that and advise against it.

On material. Silver tarnishes, and that is intended: a chain that looks as if it was bought yesterday was bought yesterday, and that is the one piece of information nobody wants to wear. Gold plating is for those who sit in the tent, because the light there is yellow and silver disappears in it. The stone is reserved for the pieces that would not be believed without it. A silver edelweiss is an ornament. An edelweiss with a stone is a claim.

That leaves the name. In Bavarian, Schmarrn is a word for nonsense, for idle talk, for something not to be taken seriously, and at the same time the name of a dish that came from a failed pancake somebody tore up and rescued with icing sugar. Both meanings apply. We cast Weißwürste in sterling silver and hang them on chains that cost more than the vehicle whose key dangles beside them. We write labels as if we were a museum. We do this with great care, and the care is not an act.

But it is, let it be admitted at the end, a Schmarrn. A well-made one. Icing sugar is included in the price.