Materials Guide

316L Stainless Steel

316L is the stainless-steel alloy family used for surgical instruments and marine hardware. What separates it from the more common stainless grades is molybdenum, the ingredient that handles the chlorides in sweat, seawater and pool water. It is the house material here: most of the catalogue is built on it.

Like all steel, 316L contains some nickel. What puts it at the gentle end of the scale is its passive chromium layer, which keeps the nickel locked in so far less of it reaches skin than with ordinary alloys. Anyone with a known nickel allergy should still read the Specifications table before buying.

304 Stainless Steel

304 is the other common stainless grade. It carries the same chromium layer as 316L and takes the same everyday wear, but it has no molybdenum — the ingredient that gives 316L its extra margin against the chlorides in pool and salt water. A good steel doing a slightly narrower job.

Brass and Copper

Brass is copper alloyed with zinc; both are warm, heavy and easy to shape, which is why so much statement jewellery is made from them. Both react with air and skin: the surface darkens over weeks, and some people see a temporary green mark where the metal sits. A polishing cloth lifts the darkening off, and keeping the piece dry slows the process down.

Sterling Silver 925

Sterling is 92.5% silver with copper making up the rest — pure silver is too soft to hold a shape. Silver darkens with time; that is the metal reacting with sulphur in the air, not a defect, and a polishing cloth brings the shine back in a minute. Stored in a closed bag away from air, the cycle stretches out.

Solid Karat Gold

Karat measures how much of the alloy is gold: 24k is pure, 18k is 75%, 14k is 58.3%, 9k is 37.5%. Lower karat is harder and holds a detail better; higher karat is warmer in colour and softer. Solid gold is gold all the way through, so there is no layer to wear away — which is exactly what makes it the most expensive thing on this page.

Plated, Vermeil, Gold-Filled, Solid

Four words a lot of jewellery is sold with, at four very different price points. The difference is how much gold is on the piece and how it got there.

• Gold-plated — a thin layer of gold deposited electrically onto a base metal, usually steel or brass. The thickness decides how long the colour stays. It is a finish, not a body of gold.
• Vermeil — plating with the base fixed by law. In the US the FTC requires sterling silver underneath and at least 2.5 microns of gold on top. The same idea as plating, on a defined floor.
• Gold-filled — a sheet of karat gold mechanically bonded to a base core and, by US rule, at least 1/20 of the item's weight. Far thicker than plating; still not solid.
• PVD — physical vapour deposition, a coating bonded in a vacuum chamber rather than in a plating bath. It goes on harder and thinner, and it is what carries most of the colour on steel jewellery today.
• Silver- and rhodium-plated — the white counterparts. Rhodium is a platinum-group metal plated over silver or white gold for a bright white surface. It is also a layer, and it also wears.

How to Read Our Finishes

• Silver-tone pieces are the bare steel itself — there is no plating to wear off. Shower, gym, ocean: the colour is the metal.
• Gold and other colours are plated over that same base, and go wherever it goes — showers and swims included. A quick rinse and dry after the pool or the sea keeps the finish bright longest.

Because the plating is the one part that can fade, coloured finishes are backed by our Color-Fade Guarantee — if the colour lets you down under normal wear, we make it right.

Where to Verify

The material named on a product page is the one we stand behind for that exact piece — read it in the Specifications table rather than in the description. Our site-wide commitments live on the Our Promise page.