Handmade Jewelry; a Brief Exploration of What It Constitutes
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Fashion jewelry is always surrounded by a lot of hype. People throw terminology around that make it confusing to even understand what is being discussed. From diamond stimulant to synthetic diamond to whatever else you can imagine. The same thing goes for handmade jewelry. Vendors love to throw the word handmade in the mix. We will explore why and what handmade really means.
So what exactly is handmade jewelry? It is jewelry that has been either assembled or made by hand. Great, but what exactly does that mean? By assembly, does that mean that somebody can buy a chain and a pendant, put them together and call them handmade? Not really.
The Federal Trade Commission stipulates that in order for an article to be considered hand made, it must be made by hand power or hand guidance. That leaves a lot of room for interpretation, although they do preclude some processes such as casting, pressing, etc. If those processes are used to make jewelry, then it is not considered handmade. So if you are thinking of purchasing handmade jewelry, make sure you look at it and consider if it’s really hand made.
The next question would be, why would you want to purchase handmade jewelry anyway? A lot of people like the idea of handmade, especially handmade in the USA. Being handmade usually means that there is true artistry behind your piece of jewelry. For those that are patriotic, it makes them feel good to get something truly one of a kind, made in the US.
Especially because there is so much mass produced jewelry being made all over the world and the news is constantly showing children being exploited in factories working from sun up to sun down making a penny per day.
The idea of purchasing a piece of that kind of jewelry is horrifying to most people. The idea of handmade makes it even more precious, knowing that it was made in an environment that does not support child labor and terrible work conditions. Although many items that were formerly handmade are being pushed to being mass produced by machine, jewelry made by hand will be around for a long time to come due to the reasons described above.
In this article, we described what handmade jewelry is and why people enjoy buying it. In the next addition, we will explore different kinds of handmade silver jewelry.
