Materials

We carefully select the materials we work with and aim to create products that have a positive impact on the one wearing it and everybody involved in its creation.

Fairtrade gold

Find detailed information on our dedicated Fairtrade Gold site.

All our gold products are Fairtrade certified and fully traceable. We have decided to use exclusively Fairtrade-Gold, as using recycled gold cannot prevent gold mining. Due to the inherent value of gold it has always been recycled, but that has not stopped nor reduced the negative impacts of gold-mining. 
An estimated 100 Million people rely on artisanal small-scale mining for their livelihoods and are working under poor conditions, sometimes with limited access to drinking water, Medicare and education. Artisanal small-scale mining attracts economically disadvantaged and vulnerable people seeking a higher income. It is also seen as an important alternative to less attractive or less profitable activities and as a chance to improve economic situations. These miners produce just 15% of global gold supplies, but make up as much as 90% of the labour force in the gold industry. Gold that is certified according to Fairtrade-standards provides small artisanal miners with better livelihood and working conditions.

Fairtrade certified mines also have to meet strict requirements on working conditions, health and safety, handling chemicals, women’s rights, child labor and protection of the environment.

The gold used for our jewelry originates from the mining organization Sotrami in Peru. Learn more about the benefits of fairtrade gold on the Fairtrade website.

To ensure that a piece of jewelry is made of Fairtrade gold, the material is handled separately from regular mined gold across all steps of the manufacturing process. Only the gold content of a Fairtrade alloy is certified.
The current trade standard for Fairtrade Gold can be found here and the criteria for the Fairtrade certification that are monitored by Flocert are available for review here.

Leather

The leather used for our jewelry is vegetable tanned and completely chrome-free nappa leather. It is manufactured by Ecopell GmbH in Germany. Being a natural product, the leather can show natural features that are not structural defects, but rather signs of the unique characteristics of each animal. It is normal for vegetable tanned lighter pastel colors to change their hue over time when exposed to sunlight for long periods of time. Learn more about the benefits and processes of vegetable tanned leather on the Ecopell website. 

Ceramics

The ceramic that we use is a Zirconium oxide ceramic, an advanced technical ceramic. It is known for its excellent material properties like being corrosion free, scratch proof, extremely hard, and durable. As it is also used in dental technology, its biocompatibility makes it suitable for allergic persons. The ceramic components of our jewelry are manufactured in Germany by a dental laboratory.

Lab-grown Diamonds

Find more information on our dedicated lab-grown diamonds site.

LAB-grown colored gemstones

We deliberately offer exclusively lab-grown gemstones. Technological advancements over the past years have enabled lab-based growth of gemstones that are of the same or better quality than mined gemstones, but feature a much smaller environmental impact and are conflict free. Through our choice we also avoid other negative environmental influences resulting from gemstone mines, such as water pollution, soil erosion or deforestation.

The most common ways to create synthetic gemstones are the flame fusion / Verneuil process or the crystal pulling process. These are both inexpensive processes, which melt powdered chemical ingredients into a large block of stone. The crystal structure of a stone that is created this way is disoriented, similar to glass and in this way different to the Chrystal structure of a mined gemstone.

Our colored gemstones are flux grown. This is an expensive and slow process that grows gemstones in a lab with controlled temperatures over a period of up to a full year. The result is an identical crystal structure to naturally mined gemstones, thus creating the same brilliance and reflection. The achieved quality of the stone is the same if not even higher. We source our colored gemstones from Chatham Inc. in the USA. More about them here.