The Richmond and Twickenham Times:
A specialist Balham firm has created the world’s most expensive hearing aid, cast in solid 24-carat gold and encrusted with 220 diamonds.
The revolutionary aid means even aging hip hop aficionados, reeling from years of overexposure to deafening bass beats, can get help for their hearing without looking like they are signing up for the blue rinse brigade.
But the hearing aid, declared the world’s “blingiest” by maker P C Werth Ltd of Nightingale Lane, does not come cheap – retailing at £25,000.
However for that money you don’t just get gold and diamonds.
The aid comes with a handy remote that allows wearers to tweak it’s settings to maximise its performance in various situations. It also uses the latest Widex digital technology.
Specialist jeweller Barry Moule had to be called in to help create the unique device. He said: “Though I have produced exotic items such as jewel encrusted mobile phones in the past this is the most unusual project in my career.”
Whether you think that’s exceedingly cool or in gross taste is entirely a matter of political and aesthetic perspective. I’m ambivalent: on the one hand it can be seen as a symptom of wastefulness in a society drunk on conspicuous consumption; on the other a triumph of craftspersonship.
But then there’s the human cost of obtaining the precious metals and stones (there’s a reason they’re precious, it’s the expense in lives of getting them out the ground) which is being disregarded in the cause of fashion. Then again, I’ve always loved the sheer artistry and miniaturised craftsmanship of serious jewellery and precious metalwork; Amsterdam is full of antique jewellery shops and artisan jewellers and sometimes I just have to stop and stare at the sheer knockout beauty of some of it.
I’m also firmly in the camp of beauty and utility in everyday objects and these are everyday objects, absolutely essential daily objects in the case of the hearing aid. If you’re going to have it on your body all the time, why shouldn’t it be beautiful? At least all that bling gives as lifechanging item like a hearing aid it’s due.
I have to consider the cultural and historical component, too: it’s an antique of the future. Gold and precious stones survive death, disaster and the fall of civilisation – a golden thread, so to speak, through history. A cache of jewellery found in a remote wilderness can be the key to a whole lost people. It’s also portable money, which has got to be a consideration in such dicey economic times.
So I seem to have argued myself into approving of the bling hearing aid, if a little sick that that so much stupid money is sloshing around loose. But then there’s these:
Swarovski crystal headphones.
And these:
Swarovski crystal iPod headphone earrings>
Now that is just tacky.
If bejewelled hearing aids (IMSHO) are cool but Swarovski crrystal headphones are tacky, then where does that leave those massively expensive mobile phones? Those are starting to scale the heights, or should it be the depths, of pointless blingery. Take the Vertu, for example:
I don’t know what those say to you but to me they say “more money than sense”. There are any number of gold, platimum and jewel-bedecked mobile phones available for the well-off with no taste, but most, like the Vertu, are all fur coat and no knickers, more effort and expense having been expended on the outside than the actual phone itself. Who wants a lousy bog-standard Nokia, even if it is slathered with all the bling there is?
But now there’s a blinged-up mobile that costs a whopping – wait for it – $1.3 million dollars.
…the price is totally based on the looks of the phone. The phone, which is made by a Russian, has been embedded with diamonds on its left and right border. There are diamonds even on the keypad of the phone. There are total of 50 diamonds. Each one is a blue diamond of 0.5 – 2 carat. The phone is completely made from platinum with logo and button’s made out of gold. The phone has been introduced in the market by the company “Ancort”.
mine) to pop out every time the damned thing rang.
It’s all very well tech looking pretty, but if it doesn’t do what you need then it’s a pointless waste, no matter hope envious it makes your shallow fellow billionaires. But then making your shallow fellow billionaires envious and poinlessly wasting expensive resources does seem to be the entire and only point.
