the three monkeys became popular once they were available as emojis. “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”. and sometimes a fourth monkey joins, that stands for “do no evil”.

the concept of the three monkeys originated from a simple play on words. the saying in japanese is mizaru, kikazaru, iwazaru = “see not, hear not, speak not”, where the -zaru is a negative conjugation on the three verbs, matching zaru, a form of saru = “monkey”. thus the saying (which does, by the way, not include any specific reference to “evil”!) can also be interpreted as referring to three monkeys. the name of the fourth monkey is, by the way, shizaru (“do not”).

along with the monkeys, there are funny Ø7mm 3d bumps and “inverse bumps” (concave holes).

8 editions:
antique copper (ae) 10
antique gold 20
black nickel 30
gold 30
antique silver 25
matte silver 30
nickel swiss 30
nickel german 25

= total 200