Our Handmade Silver Jewels: How They're Made

Handamde silver jewels

Handamde silver jewels

 

Our Miao silver jewels are made by hand from start to finish.

 

The unique techniques the Miao use to craft silver jewelry have been passed down for centuries. Making a single silver jewel involves more than 30 steps.

First, artisans carefully melt either pure or sterling silver in a stove made of charcoal.

 

A simple oil lamp and a copper blowtorch are used to bring the silver to temperatures over 1,000 degrees Celcius. This takes about 30 minutes.

Note: All of the handmade silver jewels on this site are made of 99.9% pure silver.

Melting raw silver

Melting raw silver

 

Then the scolding hot silver liquid is poured into an iron slot. There it is allowed to harden into a solid silver bar.

 

Forceps are used to take the bar out of the slot and it’s hammered into the required shape.

 

Some silver jewelry is made of paper-thin slices, while other jewels need wide, heavy pieces of pure white silver.