Sterling Silver Jewelry

Celtic jewelry – culture for the great meaning

The Celtic culture has first moved to Ireland between the years of 700 to 500 BC after travelling through Britain from Europe. With their arrivals, they brought a new culture including language, look and living style to the local people. The Celts culture has influence to the Irish culture and the new chapter for Irish history had been change since that time.

The Celts had left many things in the Irish culture although it was not officially recorded in their tradition and history books. But with the designs and symbols that were left behind, people can see just by their eye for the influence of the Celts over the Irish people. The most famous symbol for the Celts is the knot work. The design and style for knot is clearly related to both the Celts and Ireland culture. This symbol is also referred as the mystic knot or endless knot. The meaning for this symbol is about beginning and ending. With this symbol, you cannot see a beginning or ending which remind you about the timeless nature of our spirit and the world.

With this beautiful symbol with timeless meaning inside, people use the Celts knot style and combined to jewelry design. The Celtic symbols like Trinity knot, Triskele, Lover knot and Interlacing has present their love and express it in their design. The Celtic symbol has been left in the Irish and mark as part of the Irish culture. The Irish history has later on included the Celt into the Irish design. People used these signs for over the centuries and the signs spread out to the other group of people all around the world. You can now easily see the symbol of the Celt on Celtic tattoo, Celtic ring or other Celtic jewelry pieces. The meaning of the Celtic knot is all about understanding and various interpretation, as you can see from the symbol itself with the endless knot. Therefore, with these meaning, the Celtic jewelry is referred as universal jewelry for your love and your feeling and thus, it will present your enduring loved to your special one.

Charm jewelry – why going for sterling silver metal?

Charms or amulets were recorded for the use since the ancient human historic time. In the ancient Egyptian time, there were evidenced for the use of bracelets with charms or amulets for protection against evil forces and bad luck. Then the charm was begun to use for religious believe, symbol for protection and then became part of human accessorized for everyday usage.

Charms can be made by many material types, depended on personal requests. You can see the pieces from precious metals, precious gemstones or natural products like stones, bones, seashells or features. Also, the mix between gemstones and precious metal has become popular for charm necklaces, crowns and bracelets.

The use of jewelry charm had been introduced by Queen Victoria of England, she was the one who got all the credits for popularizing jewelry charms as she always wear lockets or charms on her royal bracelets and people start to follow her trend. For today, the use of charm with jewelry pieces is quite common for everybody. The popular charms are made of sterling silver and gold, but you can also found lots of materials have been use for making the charms.

Silver is a soft material for using alone in jewelry pieces. Therefore, the mix with other metal, in general copper was introduced for creation of suitable alloy metal with great capability for jewelry maker. The mixture is called sterling silver and is one of the most popular metals use for both jewelry itself and make of charms. The meaning of silver is about comfortable living. Therefore, the used of charms sterling silver can bring interested to its piece according to its look and meaning inside. The piece of sterling silver charm can represent for either religious believe or for fashion trend. You can pick up for the piece like musical instrument if you are a music lover, flowers if you are in love with that particular flower or any kind of animal to show your love to them. For these styles, they are also a perfect give to anyone you love in any occasions; birthday, graduation, ceremony or just wish them for good luck. Sterling silver charms are perfect gifts for almost every occasion.

But if sterling silver is not part your interest, you can definitely find other charms that made by other material types.  It is really up to you for both materials and styles of charms that you want to carry on.

Silver, sterling silver and silver-plated jewelry

Silver is a pure metal that can be found on the earth. There are lots of silver mine around the world. Top 5 on silver producing countries are Peru, Mexico, China, Australia and Bolivia.

Sterling silver, on the other hand, is an alloy which referred to a mixing of at least two type of metals together. In the case of sterling silver, a major component for this alloy is silver which typically contain 92.5% of silver with other metal type. 7.5% of copper is generally added to silver for the best quality of sterling silver metal use in jewelry world.

The purpose of copper mixing into silver is to help in improving silver property for jeweler. Pure silver is too soft and unable to make jewelry piece directly. The adding of copper will help in increase alloy strength and malleable while the beauty of silver is still maintain for this proportion. Sterling silver is popular for using in the jewelry world. In comparison with gold price, sterling silver could be your choice to go with for the reasonable metal price and still look great.

Although, price for sterling silver jewelry is more reasonable for precious metal, it’s still quite high. If you are silver lover but cannot really afford for the whole pieces of sterling silver jewelry, there are another options for you. The piece is call silver plating jewelry.

Silver plating is the technique to apply silver over other metal pieces. The cover with silver will give the piece look like it made off silver, but actually it’s not. Anyway, this method is popular use as the piece looks great with lower price compare with the real sterling silver jewelry. However, the problem with silver plated jewelry will come when silver cover is wearing off. At that time, you might have to think again, whether you want to cover it again with silver or just go for the new real sterling silver pieces.

For all the silver jewelry types, all you need to do is take a good care to your silver jewelry. You need to polish your jewelry pieces from time to times. All silver, either pure or sterling silver can get tarnish from reaction with oxygen in the air. You can easily remove all these tarnishes using tarnish remover reagent then, follow by polishing step. Take a good care and then, you silver jewelry will last with you for a longer time with the beauty just like the day you have bought the piece from the shop.

Sense of silver jewelry

Silver is named for a pure metal and considered as one of the precious metals. However, the price of silver is least expensive than the other precious. For example, silver cost about $20 per gram whole white gold price is ranking between $900 – $1000 per grams. The advantage on price rate did attract many people not only the silver lover to pay more attention on silver jewelry. The beauty look of silver jewelry can compatible with the look of white gold or platinum jewelry, but comes with lower price offer. No surprise to see many people choose the silver jewelry instead of white gold or platinum jewelry.

However, the pure silver is very soft metal and not easy to handle when working in jewelry making. Therefore, people do add another metal, typically copper in the proportion of 92.5% silver with 7.5% copper to generate sterling silver metal instead. The sterling silver is an alloy metal with more strength and easy to work for jewelry maker. This alloy is more popular in use for silver jeweler with the beauty look as silver metal.

In this recent time, jewelry designers are designing for many interested sterling silver jewelries for your choice to go with. The popular items for sterling silver jewelry are rings, necklaces, earrings and bracelets. The silver rings is more than just for trends and styles, they are now coming with the intricate design and make themselves as interesting accessories for daily use.

Not only the silver that can be use for jewelry piece, but also the design can be include gemstone, crystals and other stones type to increase the beauty look of the jewelry piece. The design is important factor for sterling silver jewelry for the mixing for sterling silver setting with various type of gemstone. The piece can be design for both men and women, to enjoy the beauty of silver jewelry as your accessory. Men would mainly go with the silver ring while for women; there are many pieces of silver jewelry they can go with. The whole set of sterling silver jewelry might be the best choice to go for women. With the whole set design and made in the same time, women can ensure for the same style of each piece in the set and nothing is out of focus whenever their put the silver jewelry on.