Urban Myths

Handmade versus Cast

Most jewellery is made by taking small pieces of metal and melting them into a mould. This is called casting. It certainly has its place in the making of jewellery as it allows for mass production and therefore lower prices. Unfortunately, casting also reduces both the hardness and the strength of the metal enormously. Alternatively, hand forging, or fabrication, retains both the metal's hardness and its strength allowing for much finer detail and complexity of design. This, however, requires considerable goldsmithing skills — as when making the numerous tiny and exquisite handmade leaves in our signature, award winning jewellery.

Whichever way you turn it, a computer image is a fake (a "photo" it's not) and the resultant product is a casting, just like any other mass-produced merchandise.

A print is not art, Walmart isn't Chanel, and a fake computer-generated image is not an Idar handmade original.