Jasmine & the Phoenix Design is a fine jewellery maker.  We use only the finest materials in our jewellery. By definition fine jewellery are made of solid precious metals – including silver, carat gold, platinum, palladium,etc. In some cases the silver can be plated by carat gold. We do not use fake precious metals wrapped in the names such as Gold Vermeil or Gold-Filled, these are brass based materials, these names are created to sell cheap things more than its real value to customers.

We use real solid precious metals so that each of our Jewellery piece is made to not only be worn now but years and generations to come.

Sterling Silver:An alloy of silver containing 92.5% silver and 7.5% of other metals, predominantly copper. Silver is a precious metal and, much like gold, is too soft to be utilized in its pure form. Sterling silver is much harder than pure silver (99.9% silver), and it is a standard material used in high quality jewellery, established brands such as Tiffany, George Jensen all use sterling silver in their jewellery. We guarantee we only use best quality sterling silver and our silver quality matches top brands silver quality such as Tiffany.

Carat Gold:A carat, when used with gold, is a unit of purity: 24-carat gold is pure gold, but usually you mix gold with a metal like silver to make jewelry (because pure gold is too soft). Each carat indicates 1/24th of the whole. So if a piece of jewelry is made of metal that is 18 parts gold and 6 parts silver or other non-ferrous metal, that is 18-carat gold.

Glod Plating:All gold plated jewellery made by us has a base metal of solid sterling silver. Gold-plated jewellery is created using an electro-chemical process that places a layer of gold on top of the base metal. The carat of the gold used throughout our collection is 14ct or 18ct.

What are other metal materials in the market?

Gold Vermeil or Gold-Filled : If you’re shopping for gold-tone jewelry, you may have seen jewellery labelled “gold vermeil”, “vermeil”, “14ct vermeil”, “18ct vermeil”, etc.

It is a big no-no from a professional jeweller’s point of view. Especially if you pay over 20 dollars for a Gold Vermeil or Gold-Filled piece.

You have to be very careful, when it comes to claimed Gold Vermeil or Gold-Filled metal. Often the name of Gold Vermeil or Gold-Filled metals is another crafty marketing technic to call gold plated brass, e.g. a thin layer of carat gold plated over a piece of brass. The only difference is that it may be a slightly thicker layer of carat gold. Yes, brass, not even silver. No matter how the maker claims the thickness, it is just a very thin layer (roughly 2.5 microns thick. A micron is 1/1000th of a milli meter. The amount of gold used on one piece is worth under $ 1 dollar) of carat gold plated on the surface of brass. Gold Vermeil will eventually wear off, revealing the brass beneath. And to make it worse, that plating will wear off quickly on rings that are worn every day, that are worn while swimming or kept on in the shower.If you are lucky, you will buy Gold Vermeil or Gold-Fill pieces with silver as base metal, in that case, it is not too bad,but the price should be at silver price not gold.