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Craft
Most silver jewellery sold online is stamped from sheet in a factory of several hundred people and finished in seconds. Ours is not. Here is exactly what happens between a block of wax and the package on your doorstep.
01
Every piece begins as a wax model cut by hand under 10x magnification. This is the slowest stage and the one that determines whether the piece is worth making — if the wax master is coarse, no amount of finishing will save it. A single master takes between two and five days.
02
Wax masters are attached to a central sprue to form a "tree", then encased in plaster. The plaster sets, the wax is burned out, and molten 925 silver is poured into the cavity. One tree yields between four and eight pieces, depending on size. The cuff weighs 28 grams before finishing and 26.4 after.
03
The cast pieces are sawn off the sprue and the stubs filed flush by hand. This is where the hallmark is struck — S925, applied with a steel punch and a single sharp blow. A crooked hallmark means the piece is scrapped.
04
Hand engraving uses a chisel graver pushed by palm pressure, not a motor. Characters are cut in a single pass each, which is why the depth varies slightly between strokes. A bracelet takes ninety minutes. Lasers would be five times faster and immediately obvious to anyone who looked closely.
05
Pieces are dipped in potassium sulphide, which blackens the silver surface. The raised areas are then brushed back to bright silver while the recesses stay dark. This is what makes a pattern read from a distance, and it is the stage most often rushed by larger manufacturers.
06
Finished pieces are tumbled in steel shot for four to six hours, which work-hardens the silver and removes burrs. Then each piece is weighed, checked against the master, and inspected for porosity under a loupe. Roughly one in twelve fails and is melted down.
We have visited all three. Certificates of compliance for nickel release, lead and cadmium are held on file for each, and are available on request.
30 people · Casting and stone setting
18 people · Wire work, beading, small castings
4 people · Hand engraving only
It does not mean the piece is unique — our variants are identical to within a gram and a millimetre, because they come from the same master. It does not mean no machinery is involved; a casting centrifuge and a tumbling barrel are machinery. What it means here is that no stage is fully automated, that a person touches every piece at least four times, and that the operations requiring judgement — grading, engraving, highlighting — are done by eye and by hand.