Why I Only Work in Solid Sterling Silver

Why I Only Work in Solid Sterling Silver (And What's Actually in That $20 Necklace or pair of cheap earrings)

A customer mentioned to me last week that her daughter's ears kept getting infected after wearing earrings from one of those online fast fashion sites. She figured she must be allergic to silver. She wasn't. What she'd been wearing wasn't silver at all. It just looked like it. Underneath the shiny coating was a base metal, and that coating was the only thing standing between her skin and whatever was really in there.

So what is actually in a $20 necklace or a pair of cheap earrings? Almost never solid metal. It's usually brass, zinc alloy or plain steel underneath, plated with a thin layer of something that reads as gold or silver under shop lighting. That plating is what gives it away eventually, because it wears thin at the exact spots that rub against skin, and once it does, whatever's underneath is in direct contact with you. That base layer is where nickel most often turns up. Studies on inexpensive earrings have found nickel present in roughly a third of them.

Nickel is the one people notice, because it makes itself known. Once someone's skin reacts to it, that sensitivity tends to stay for life, and ears are one of the worst places for it to show up, since the skin there is thin and repeated exposure through a piercing only sensitises it further.

Lead and cadmium are the quieter concern. Lead can damage the nervous system, kidneys and reproductive system. Cadmium builds up in the body over time, mainly in the kidneys, and long term exposure is linked to kidney disease and weakened bones. Neither of these metals should be anywhere near something sitting against your skin for hours a day.

None of this is rare or hidden away in obscure research either. A government test of cheap fashion jewellery in the Netherlands found close to one in five pieces carrying dangerously high levels of cadmium, lead or nickel, and independent testing of pieces bought through some of the big overseas marketplaces has found more than a third exceeding legal limits for heavy metals altogether.

This is the part that actually explains why solid sterling silver costs what it costs. It isn't a coating over something cheaper. It's 92.5% silver all the way through, with the rest alloyed in for strength, usually copper. There's no surface layer to wear off and expose anything underneath, because there's nothing underneath. What touches your skin the day I hand it to you is the same metal that's still touching your skin years from now.

If a piece from somewhere else has ever left your skin irritated or turned your finger green, it wasn't you being sensitive. It was the metal.

I make every piece I sell from solid sterling silver, by hand, in my studio in Sydney. See my latest earring designs.

Pip xx