Buy Hand Made

If I had more faith in the ability of humans to read between the lines than I would have just left the title and not written anything else. Alas, people are mostly dumb and so allow me to explain the simple economics of buying hand made goods versus commercial goods.  As always I will be using the Jewelry trade as an example because I am a silversmith, but this translates to all hand made and hand crafted goods.

What most people do not realize is that the vast majority of jewelry is not made by the person selling it.  This is especially true if you are buying from a store.  Most of those high end jewelers actually buy their innovatory from a catalog of current trendy jewelery which is all mass made in some third world country.  These rings and necklaces are made in bulk in a factory, paying their workers 10 cents an hour so that they can sell us richer countries cheap goods, which the stores mark up at 500% and sell to us, the gullible public. Since everyone likes pictures, I will provide a visual example:

The ring on the Bottom is available for sale from a national jewelry chain.  It has a sapphire, several tiny diamonds and is made from white gold.  The Ring on top I made by hand. It has a sapphire and is made from sterling silver.  They both cost about the same.  Now take a look at the detail in the lower ring.  Do you honestly thing that a human made this by hand?  If so we need to talk...  This was made by a machine in a country very far away and it cost them $50 to make... probably less...and that includes the stones.  If your read my blog post about how a ring is made by hand, then you know that even a simple design like this one takes many steps, and a talented craftsman to create.  Thus, forgive me for getting peevish whenever I overhear anyone saying that it is too expensive.

So where am I going with all of this?  Let me put it this way: Who would you rather give your money to? A fellow neighbor or a aristocrat in China?  The answer should be easy.  As Americans (and other countries are guilty of this too) we have become a "cheaper is better" society.  We demand to have it our way or the highway and we want it now.  We all love to get good deals, but all of our money is filtering into the economies of other countries.  If we don't shape up and start to put our money into the hands of our own shop owners, farmers, craftspeople and tailors, then we are going to find that we are the next third world country, driven into a hole of debt by our own thirst for a good deal.  I think we are all aware of how this works: By spending more money in our own local economies, there is more money flowing around...it is that simple.

The key to making this work is to rewire the way that we think...  to form a connection with what we eat, wear, drive and use everyday.  In the case of jewelry, the bragging right should sound more like this: "I had a local silver smith custom make this for me by hand!", not this" I got a great deal on this ring from the jewelry shop in the mall".  And this starts with having an understanding of what we are buying.

So next time you decide you want a loaf of bread, a cup of coffee, a piece of jewelry or even a car, consider if it would be worth it to spend just a tad more to have the money spent at a shop where they do their own work.  I have found the best part is the personal Karma you  feel afterwards, knowing that you have helped to support the people around you, and we all know that Karma has a way of coming full circle.

Oh! Shiny!

Is it just me or is there more and more junk being pawned off as real these day?  I Make fine hand crafted jewelry and I am always very careful about differentiating between real and fake, treated and untreated, natural and synthetic etc...  the problem is that there are so many hobbyists out there that are muddying the waters with their trinkets that the average buyer has no idea what they are actually paying for.  So here is a little buyers guide on things to look for and the basics of buying jewelry.

Real versus synthetic:
When a jeweler has an items, such as a ruby ring, listed for sale, they are required by law to reveal everything that they know about the stone and the metal.  This includes if the stone is natural or not, any treatments and irregularities as well as the properties of the metal, such as being solid or plated, and how pure it is.

So What is "Real"?
Well, This is sort of a novice question, as the stone you are looking at is always real; it certainly is not imaginary... so asking if it is real wont get you any closer to a relative answer... What you need to ask is if it is "Natural" or "earth mined".  This means that it was mined from the earth, not grown in a laboratory.  However, Most natural stones out there are treated in some way. For example, about 90% of the gemstones on the market have been heat treated to enhance their color and clarity... especially amethyst, sapphire, ruby, and many others...

But I want a 100% Natural Untreated stone!!!
Well, be prepared to pay out the nose for it.  The cost for a natural untreated natural stone will often be ten times that of its heated counter part.

What about grades?
Different stones are graded differently, for example, Diamonds have a grading scale that is different from colored stones.  The highest grade for most colored stones is either AAA Grade or Collection Grade (opals are often referred to as being "Collection Grade").  Usually the difference between AAA and AA Is very subtle and so if you don't care, just go with what looks best to you.  The price is often quite substantial but the true difference is slight.

What the heck are Swarovski Crystals?
These are a brand name artificial crystals made in a factory.  More or less they are expensive glass.  Often they are given names akin to real gemstones such as emerald or topaz swarovski crystals, when they are actually not gemstones at all.  The only similarities are the color.  To me this is fraudulent and misleading.  if the crystal is red, it should be called a "red glass crystal", not a "ruby swarovski crystal".  The general public tends to think that they are actually buying a ruby, not a piece of glass.  the second problem with thesetypes of things is the internet search.  If you search for "Ruby Pendant on google, etsy, artfire etc...  most of the resultrs that come up are actually not rubies at all, they are swarovski.  To test my own theory, I just did a search on Etsy for "Ruby Pendant".  On the first page of results which had 40 items, only a few had actual rubies, the rest were "Crystals", "Red Glass", "Swarovski" and others which were tagged with "Ruby" to get more hits.  I am tempted to go around flagging things like this.