Romilly Saumarez-Smith’s miniature artworks are made from detritus found by mudlarks and metal detectorists that she has snapped up on eBay – and they have the seal of approval of Edmund de Waal

The discarded scraps of ancient lives, found by metal detectorists and sold for tiny sums on eBay have been transformed by jeweller Romilly Saumarez-Smith into miniature works of art.

The modest treasures include a button that dropped off a garment 1,000 years ago, a thimble almost worn through with use, rings with gaping empty mounts instead of their original precious gems, an Anglo-Saxon stud with just a gleaming trace left of its gilding, and medieval dress pins shed into the Thames by some poor ferry passenger who must have arrived on the far bank a little dishevelled.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gold Caddis Earrings 2012: Tudor bronze buttons; 18 carat gold. Photograph: Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts

All the finds have been mounted for an exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich, which opens on 5 December and runs until April 2016. A button has been transformed into a tiny forest of golden trees, and a mournful bronze stag (probably a piece of harness decoration) has sprouted a new silver antler to replace one that broke off centuries ago. A thimble has acquired a jaunty topknot of silver curls, and another, squashed almost flat, a chaplet of uncut diamonds.

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Almost all of the pieces can be worn, but with care – some of the Roman bronze pins are still as sharp as daggers.

They have been borrowed back from friends and collectors for the exhibition and have only been shown once before in the studio of an admirer, the author and ceramics artist Edmund de Waal.

Saumarez-Smith is careful not to alter the original objects, which remain as corroded and blackened as they were found. Many are stitched into their new settings with cobwebs of real gold thread, or held in golden mounts with fresh water pearls, garnets and uncut diamonds.

Before she turned to jewellery making, Saumarez-Smith was a book binder – though the first time she bought archaeological finds on eBay it was actually for stocking-filler presents for her two sons. She was astonished at how cheap they were, and how carefully the finders wrapped them before sending them, and found herself as excited as any child at Christmas as each little parcel was opened.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gertrudes Jewel, 2013: Two medieval gilded mounts; a Roman bronze turban nail; an Anglo-Saxon bronze polyhedral nail; oval garnet; oxidised silver. Photograph: Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts

She makes her jewellery with borrowed hands. Illness has robbed her of the use of her own hands, but the pieces are made in the tiny workshop at her home by Lucie Gledhill, Anna Wales and Laura Ngyou, after she has spent weeks or months staring at each battered scrap of history, until she can envisage its future.

The finds are the evidence of modest lives which metal detectorists turn up constantly, in ploughed fields or on river banks: many people have bucketloads of them at home, and call the coins worn beyond recognition “grots”. Real treasure finds – including precious metal and bronze hoards – must be reported by law. But hundreds of thousands of objects with little commercial value but great historic interest have been recorded under the voluntary Portable Antiquities scheme operated by the British Museum, who are helping map vanished settlements, forts, roads and paths across the country.

“They’re so beautiful,” Saumarez-Smith says fondly – of the humble scraps of metal, not her own creations. “There must be such stories in them, but we just can’t read them. I think of myself as giving them new life after they’ve spent so long hidden under the earth, and sending them back out into the world.”