Set Apart From the Rest by Choosing Handmade Silver Jewelry

In today's world, people are used to mass production. They do not mind having one of the many items produced by the machine as long as they are affordable. But some things remain to be special. Some things are meant to have more importance over other items, which mean they demand a certain premium.

Handmade silver jewelry is one of them. While machines have paved the way to produce cheaper jewelry, fine jewelry comes about from careful craftsmanship. Handmade jewelry made from silver is jewelry set apart from the rest. These after all demand the patient labor of a skillful artisan who used various hand tools, instead of letting a machine do the work. The use of files, pliers, saw, mallet and blowtorch is a painstaking process which guarantees uniqueness of the jewelry and a premium on its price.

This is similar to possessing long gowns. There are those mass-produced items you see in the department store rack. These are definitely affordable but you get the risk of running into someone wearing the same dress. Otherwise, most of these dresses do not exactly match your personality and style because they are produced considering a safe style which can be accepted by most any personality. On the other hand, there are couture gowns which are produced using careful handwork, even some patient embroidery. These are definitely more cutout for its owner and are more valuable than those off-the-rack items.

Handmade jewelry are definitely more premium than the machine-produced items but silver items are the least expensive to make compared to the rest which use more precious metals like gold or platinum. With this fact, it is not impossible for you to own handmade jewelry. The art of producing them is also less difficult since such process have long existed - since the 13th century. German merchants started the use of sterling silver as they used silver coins for trading. Through time, there have been many substitutes and additions made into the production of silver jewelry.

It is therefore important to scrutinize the materials used in your jewelry. The price and value of your silver pieces depend on the gems and type of silver used. The price is not simply dictated by the fact that they are handmade, but also on the materials used. In the United States, sterling silver dictates that the piece should not contain less than 92.5% silver. The remaining content is copper. It is therefore common for your silver jewelry to tarnish because of this unique mixture of silver and copper. Silver plating is a different story altogether.

It means that whatever item can be used on your jewelry; only that a metal or some type of alloy is layered or coated with pure metal such as silver. There are silver pieces that are plainly made into costume jewelry which means they are produced to meet a certain trend. They may be handmade but they are usually made of non-precious metals with false gems or even plastic. They are inexpensive and poorly made which results to their easy bending, breaking and falling out.

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Why Handmade Jewelry Is Far Superior to Machine-Made or Mass-Produced Jewelry

When one thinks of handmade jewelry one of the first things that strikes you is how much care and attention was put in by the artisan to create that particular piece. This, in my honest opinion is the number one reason why handcrafted jewelry is better than mass-produced jewelry. Buying a piece of artisan jewelry means you literally get a piece that is unique and in some ways carries a part of the maker herself due to the love and dedication that has gone into making the item. An item that has been created by the artisan's own two hands and not a piece of machinery in some factory.

Earrings Quartz Gemstone Handmade Jewelry

Rather than purchasing mass-produced jewelry pieces and furthering large corporations that oftentimes do not look engage in fair trade practices, one should instead support the small businesses of artisans who desire to share their craftsmanship with the world. It takes the artisan a considerable amount of time to create a beautiful masterpiece unlike machines which can churn out thousands if not more pieces a day. Needless to say quality is higher in the artisan's work because it is not made on such a massive scale of production.

Another reason why handmade pieces are preferable is that custom pieces are generally an artisan's delight simply because they have such passion for the work that they do and they relish the opportunity to work with a customer in creating something that he or she has in mind. This of course makes the custom-made jewelry even more special because it has been taken from a conceptual idea in a client's mind to become a reality in the artisan's hands. It goes without saying that machine-made jewelry is all about producing items by the truck load, hence there is no option for a customer to contribute any ideas towards the customisation of what they would like to wear.

Because crafters have an immense love for what they do, they also take a great deal of pride in their workmanship and this means they can remake an item several times with painstaking effort until they are fully satisfied with what they have made. This highlights why only a certain level of exceptional customer service can only be achieved by small artisan businesses because they take the time and the effort to do what a cold piece of machinery could never give in terms of quality of workmanship and the thought and love put into what they create.

Hopefully this article has helped to outline the differences between handmade versus machine-made jewelry. If you are interested in viewing some handmade jewelry pieces visit http://www.hausofrouge.etsy.com