Gold Plated Black Cufflinks

Most men think about their cuffs only when it is already too late to do anything about them.

These are gold-plated cufflinks finished with a centre of black enamel — quiet, glossy, and rather more deliberate than the shirt they will eventually fasten.

Gold plating, black enamel, a clean dark face. The sort of detail that is noticed without being remarked upon.

It is the black enamel that catches Jonah. He says it has the exact depth of a watch dial he once bought in a hotel lobby in the early nineties — black, lacquered, and four minutes slow by the end of every day. He kept the watch anyway. He maintains that a watch which runs slightly slow is simply less anxious than the rest of us, and that he has never quite trusted a perfectly accurate man.

The enamel here has that same unbothered darkness.

Against a white cuff it does the same quiet work: present, composed, and entirely uninterested in hurrying.

Some things keep good time. Others simply keep their composure.