All of our Britannia metal Jewelry, Hair Accessories and Parts used on our Leather products, such as buttons and findings are hand cast right here in our studio shop in Santa Rosa, CA. In our casting process we use only the purest, lead free, food grade Britannia metal. "Food grade" refers to the metal purity, qualifying it for use in the production of utensils and dishware. Because of its purity, Britannia metal can be cast at very high temperatures that result in a low tarnish, high polish finish.

BRITANNIA METAL CASTING

 We carve our own molds and cast all our products in small batches of 6-12 pieces at a time. This insures the casting quality of each individual piece and results in very light weight yet durable parts, especially important for our earrings and hair accessories. Our shop features a state of the art water treatment system that utilizes polymers to thoroughly clean soap residues that accumulate in our casting process, eliminating any potential contamination of public water systems.

We purchase Britannia metal in bars or ingots that we cut or melt in whole pieces before placing them in a heated casting bowl. Liquefied Britannia metal is then carefully ladled into a steel centrifuge where our carved rubber molds have been placed. The molten metal seeps into the mold as it spins, filling carved cavities in the rubber that designate the form of earring, necklace or bookmark, etc. When the mold is split open the Britannia metal pieces are lifted out of the mold in the form of a wheel with adjoining spokes where the liquid metal has solidified in our carved, decorative shapes at the tips of the spokes. The jewelry pieces are broken off to make their way through a series of polishing processes where they are vibrated in cone shaped ‘media’ pellets before they are individually hand worked to completion.