What the metal
actually is.

Titanium contains no nickel.

Everything in the A line is commercially pure titanium, grade 2 — titanium with the ordinary trace elements of the refining process and nothing added. There is no nickel in it. That is a statement about the composition of a metal, and it is the only kind of statement we are in a position to make.

What it is not is a promise about you. Skin reacts to more than nickel, and a piece can bother someone for reasons that have nothing to do with its alloy — moisture trapped under a wide band, a rough edge, soap left behind under a ring. We would rather say that than let “no nickel” do work it cannot do.

Titanium is stiffer than silver and lighter than steel. Two practical consequences: a titanium cuff keeps the shape you give it instead of loosening over months, and a titanium ring cannot be resized by a jeweller the way a silver or gold one can. If a ring is the wrong size we exchange it rather than stretch it.

On our titanium pieces the clasp is titanium too. That is worth checking wherever you buy: a chain sold as titanium very often finishes in a steel clasp, and the clasp sits against the back of the neck for as many hours as the chain sits at the front.

316L contains nickel, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

316L is austenitic stainless steel: roughly 17% chromium, 10 to 14% nickel, 2 to 3% molybdenum, the rest iron, with the carbon kept low — that is what the L means. It is used for surgical instruments and marine fittings because it resists corrosion, and it takes a mirror polish that stays bright without any coating at all.

The nickel is alloyed into the crystal structure rather than sitting on the surface, so very little of it is released. But little is not none, and the honest way to talk about this is with a measurement rather than an adjective.

What the law regulates is release, not content: under REACH Annex XVII entry 27, a piece in prolonged contact with skin must release less than 0.5 µg/cm² per week, and a piece worn in a piercing less than 0.2. That is measured to EN 1811 by a laboratory, per production batch. Where we hold a report we publish the reference on the product page; where we do not, the page says so in the same place rather than leaving a gap.

Some people with a severe nickel allergy react to 316L anyway. If that is you, titanium is the line with none in it, and we would rather point you there than sell you a steel piece with a reassuring word attached to it.

Sterling silver tarnishes. That is the metal, not a fault.

Sterling is 92.5% silver and 7.5% other metal, almost always copper. Pure silver is too soft to hold a shape; the copper is what makes it wearable. It is also what makes it darken, because copper reacts with sulphur compounds in ordinary air.

So a sterling piece goes dark on a shelf as readily as on a wrist. A polishing cloth takes it back. We treat tarnish as normal behaviour of the metal, never as a fault, and we say the same thing on reklamation so there is no argument about it later.

Our C-07 is oxidised on purpose: the same reaction, applied evenly and deliberately, then polished back on the raised edges. It will lighten where the ring rubs. That is the finish behaving as designed, and it is on the product page before you buy.

Swedish rules on precious metal require the fineness of a silver item to be stated. Our sterling pieces are struck with the 925 mark rather than only described as sterling, and every product page says whether a piece carries a struck mark. A piece that is plated with gold over a silver core is marked for its core — it is a silver piece with gold on it, not a gold piece.

Plating is a finite quantity of metal, and we print how much.

A plated piece is one metal with a thin layer of another electrodeposited onto it. The layer is measured in micrometres — thousandths of a millimetre. Ours run 0.5, 2.5 and 5.0 µm, and every plated product page carries the figure.

Almost nobody prints it. A piece described only as gold plated is usually carrying about half a micrometre, which is why a plated stud can cost eighteen dollars. There is nothing wrong with 0.5 µm as long as you know that is what you are getting, which is the whole reason we list it.

Plating wears. When it does, the base metal touches your skin. How long that takes depends on the thickness, where you wear it, and how often. We list the thickness so you can compare.

That makes the base metal the more important number of the two. Most plated jewellery is built on brass, and brass contains nickel — so when the gold goes, brass is the surface against you. Two of our plated pieces are built on 316L instead, and one on solid sterling. They wear through as well; what changes is what is waiting underneath.

For plated pieces the nickel release test has an extra step: EN 12472 simulates wear and corrosion first, and the limit has to be met after that. Testing a fresh gold surface would tell you nothing about the piece in a year’s time.

How we are allowed to write it, and how we do

The words are not interchangeable, and using them loosely is a mislabelling problem rather than a stylistic one.

• Gold or 18k gold on its own: only for solid gold. We do not sell any.
• Gold-plated, always with the thickness in micrometres and the base metal named. This is what our D line is.
• Gold-filled: a mechanically bonded layer at a legally defined proportion of the total weight. We do not sell any, so we do not use the term.
• Silver or sterling silver: only for solid 925. A silver-coloured coating is silver-plated, with a thickness.