March 15, 2026
To celebrate International Women's Month and Mother's Day, we caught up with the OG Mother of TGF, our rock n roll Queen, Carol Lehtonen-Riley.
Read on to discover Carol’s vibrant life, a life rooted in family, music, motorbikes and community, which took her across America all the way to London.
We also discuss her time and influence at The Great Frog, which she co-founded back in the 70s.
I was born in November 1945, in Ft Knox, Kentucky, where the gold supporting US currency is kept (or at least used to be.) As a 6 month old infant, I left the place before they had a chance to give me the keys to the vaults. Age restrictions I’m sure.
Initially, in about 1969, my then husband (a young aspiring English artist) and I left America after making an obscure film in Washington DC with an Italian film director who said “you are the new Romeo and Juliette and must go to Rome to make films.” Naively, we believed him and drove off on our 650cc Triumph Tiger motorcycle through France and Switzerland to Italy where we lived for 2 1/2 years, working in the theatre near the famed Spanish Steps in Rome in the Italian production of the musical “Hair.”
Speaking extremely minimal Italian, I was only on stage handing out microphones, giving out brochures as patrons entered the show and adding my voice to the choral parts on stage. It was such a buzz, finishing up every night with the “Tribù” (tribe, as we were called, 75% of whom were English) into the wee hours. Finally drifting off to sleep with drums and guitars still beating in my head, I had fallen in love with Rome.
Within that first month, while [we were] asleep after a late night show our motorbike was stolen. Interpol eventually traced it back to us [and we found out] it had been used in a bank heist in Amsterdam!!
We never got it back, but instead bought an old Volkswagen van, with split front windscreen, of course.
When the curtain closed on the final night’s show, the two lead girls began a fist fight, rolling on the floor pulling each other’s hair, the leading lady shouting that her “understudy” had tried to upstage her. The famous and most acclaimed film and theatre director, producer and production designer Franco Zeffirelli was in the front row and both girls wanted to be recognised by him and chosen to be in his productions.
As I believed in the theme of “Hair,” peace, love, and harmony, it altered my naive, sheltered, impressionable mind. When invited to travel with them to perform in countless cities throughout Italy and beyond, I declined, no longer believing in its ethos.
Not wanting to leave Rome, one of the dancers who became a close friend and who also left the show, suggested a move to where they lived in a beautiful little village on a hilltop, 40k east of Rome. A quaint village half inhabited by artists. I began my painting “career,” picked olives in the many groves, made new friends and ate Italian meals around many tables, enjoying their homemade red wines. The piazza in the centre of the village had tables out front of little coffee houses where old men sat all afternoon playing chess. It was heavenly.
When it became apparent I was not going to make a living selling paintings, it was time to pack our canvasses into the van and head back to London where, after finding a flat, I began working in ‘The Chelsea Drugstore’ - not a drugstore, although I vaguely remember a good few drugs were passed around ;). The Rolling Stones sang about The Chelsea Drugstore on one of their albums.
While working there, I met Paterson Riley, who asked me to come and work in one of the concessions he and his business partner had in Carnaby Street, selling smoking paraphernalia, M.C. Escher posters and Rolling Stones motifs, but not jewellery.
Soon we got another concession on the street and began selling jewellery on a “sale or return basis.” It wasn’t long before we realised we had to size rings, so we self-taught and got a couple jeweller friends to guide us, and the rest is history…
Multifarious. I wore many hats, from the beginning until I left. Initially doing window displays and working behind the counter (by this time we had 3 “shops”), as well as working in the upstairs office of Ganton Street with our accountant.
I travelled about London to casters, buying tools and gemstones (although many stone merchants came to us directly from India, Venezuela, Mexico, and Africa, etc.) I cooked many meals at our home for countless “rock stars” and session musicians who often jammed with us in our Wimbledon and Harrow-on-the-Hill shop basements. I played the flute. It was not a TGF role, but my flute did often get used as a display prop with jewellery draped upon it.
I often worked in our workshops soldering and polishing, taking turns in the office, having then become our Bookkeeper as well, dealing with landlords, contracts, and “bank managers” which banks used to have, painting shop fronts, staining shop floors on a Sunday afternoon, y’know, crazy things, interspersed with being a sales assistant. Somewhere along the way, I became a Director of the company and shareholder.
Pictured below: Carol and Reino working at TGF back in the day
I loved our people - the partners, staff, customers, some famous, many not but all unique. Eventually (it took a good few years back in the 70’s and 80’s to get there) I loved the buzz of, not personally, but collectively, being recognised by much of the public as our name became known.
Once, with 5 or 6 of us piled in a car, queuing on our way to a concert, driving as fast as those walking beside us, a few asked if they were going the right direction to the venue entrance. One of the guys placed his hand on our open window door wearing as many Great Frog rings as we were! It was “a moment.” There was an instant camaraderie and if memory serves, the passing ‘round of a joint or two. Then, much to our surprise, at the end of the concert, as we spilled out onto the nighttime tarmac, a crowd of them began chanting “Great Frog, Great Frog, Great Frog, Great Frog!” I wish I could remember the name of the band. We saw so many that the dates/times/venues have rolled into a beautiful blur.
It was so cool that most of us together would attend concerts of bands we made jewellery for, and were often lucky enough to have got backstage passes. It was always a thrill. A few of the bands we all went to see together were Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd, Bob Marley, Rush, Motörhead, J.J. Cale, Queen, Prince, Eric Clapton, AC/DC, Billy Idol, The Rolling Stones, Tom Petty, The Who, Steve Miller Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Van Morrison, Led Zeppelin, Guns N’ Roses, Metallica, ZZ Top, Aerosmith, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Van Halen, Kiss, Blondie, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Foo Fighters, Talking Heads, Roxy Music, Little Feat, Faith No More, Ozzy in various guises, plus far too many to name.
At one Billy Idol concert, he came out bat-like, hidden behind his to-the-floor flowing baby blue leather cape. He flung it open with his now infamous skull and ebony walking stick that a band member had collected from our workshop that same afternoon. Billy began swinging it round and round in the air high above his head as one of our lot chimed “I hope the glue’s dry. That skull weighs a ton and I only attached it to the stick a couple hours before the concert. If it detaches it could kill someone!!” He was serious. I loved the exciting and fabulous creations that came out of our workshop.
Another one of my joys was the many times Reino would come home still in school uniform and start “playing” with the wax pot (used for injecting wax into our rubber moulds, when we used to do our own casting in the basement of our home.) Reino and Mercedes got accustomed to awakening to the smell of melting wax from the kiln which would have been on all night. Reino would mess about warming up rejects and combining them. One piece he “built” was connecting a small eagle skull head onto a pair of wings from our then small winged skull ring. It was so good we ended up casting it and it became one of our top selling pieces. Could that have been the moment he unknowingly found his calling?
Pictured below: Carol and Pat and some TGF staff members in the 80s at one of the many events they attended.
London is a city like no other. There might be a guy sporting a colourful mohawk next to a besuited man from The City, to a cockney “bovver boy,” a lady in camelhair coat, next to a leather clad Hells Angel all standing side by side, be it at a bus stop, or our shop counter. Without judgement, they would share and compare their thoughts on our jewellery. They weren’t freaks. It was simply accepted as normal.
That’s the brilliant diversity of London. I even loved taking the tube or bus to work everyday and daily I loved hearing the different accents from “Queen’s English,” Northern, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, cockney, and everything in between. There are probably more unique accents in our small island than in most big countries.
It’s thrilling walking around London, Oxford Street, Regent Street and most of Soho being my main stomping grounds, besides the East End, seeing most shopfronts on street level with ancient historic buildings above. Everywhere there were crowds of people like ants busily buzzing about, each on a mission. I loved the feel of the international aspect of cosmopolitan London. It was rare to find a quiet haven, but I was young and found it exciting and charming. I learned so much from that great city.
Pictured below: Carol on Carnaby Street in the 70s
That’s easy. My “Mum” ring. My two kids, my proudest achievements by far and the loves of my life, were born in the 70s and 80s in and around The Great Frog, always immersed in music, bike culture and knowing more adults than kids their own age. It gave them an edge, an immense vocabulary and how to act amongst a myriad of types of people of all ages and backgrounds.
Today isn’t just about celebrating me as a mum, but also those who came before and after. My mum who lived to the great age of 102 was an inspiration to so many. Without us there would be no world. Women are to be celebrated.
A quick story: when Reino was a baby still in nappies, I picked him out of his push chair and with ice cream cone in hand on a rare hot sunny day in Richmond, he reached over to ring the entrance bell of a posh antique jewellery shop just so we could have a nosey about. Looking down her nose at us, the snooty woman barely opened the door and said “children are not allowed.” Angry, I said “but I never buy anything without his approval as he knows everything about quality pieces and gemstones.” She reluctantly let us in watching our every move, surprised as Reino proceeded to differentiate gold from silver and name every gemstone in the displays: amethyst, tourmaline, diamond, ruby, turquoise, jade, and I even remember him saying cubic zirconia! My joyous heart beat with a mum’s pride. Shocked by what the shopkeeper heard, she began to smile and could not stop talking about this marvel of a baby.
Pictured below: Carol outside the refurbished TGF store on Ganton Street
