Our fine jewellery and engagement rings are crafted by qualified and experienced Artisans who love their work. They use traditional methods, much of which is painstakingly completed by hand. Bringing one of our exquisite pieces to life, requires great skill and is a very labour intensive and detailed process.
Our jewellery is of the highest quality, made using the finest quality precious metals including solid gold and sterling silver. We also offer upgrades in our bridal collections to 18 carat gold and Platinum, historically regarded as the most luxurious of all metals.
Our metals of choice are solid 14 carat and 10 carat gold, available in white, yellow and rose. We also use solid sterling silver stamped 925, in our fashion collections as this metal is simply beautiful to work with, especially when creating our beautiful dress pieces.
In our exclusive designer collections we also combine or fuse solid 10 carat gold and sterling silver to deliver inspiring and timeless pieces. Our luxurious Synergy Collection features the combination of solid sterling silver and 10 carat gold to deliver a bold Scandinavian style designer collection with a high quality finish.
In our bold designer chain and bracelet collections we use a unique process combining solid 10 carat gold tubing, filled with sterling silver to add strength and weight for durability. This process also allows our designers to experiment and deliver modern on trend gold designs which are affordable and represent amazing value.
At Secrets Shhh, we do not use gold plated base metals in our fine jewellery collections. We also do not gold plate silver to a yellow or rose gold colour. This process does not meet our quality standards or expectations.
Purity & Hallmark Stamps
A carat is a measurement of the purity of the gold. Gold used in jewellery will contain a number of other metals in the alloys to provide strength and durability. The alloys usually include silver, copper and zinc. The higher the carat number, the higher amount of the gold content. At Secrets Shhh we minimise the use of Nickel in our alloys and use Nickel Safe alloys or Nickel free alloys.
Gold
9ct Gold
This will be hallmarked or stamped with either 9ct, 9k or S375.
9ct is 375 parts or 37.5% pure gold and 625 parts other metals.
10ct Gold
This will be hallmarked or stamped with either 10ct, 10k or S417. 10ct is 417 parts or 41.7% pure gold and 583 parts other metals
14ct Gold
This will be hallmarked or stamped with either 14ct, 14k or S585. 14ct is 585 parts or 58.5% pure gold and 415 parts other metals.
Gold is naturally a yellow colour metal and is always mixed or alloyed with other metals to give it strength, durability and to change its colour appearance to white or rose.
White gold starts as a yellow metal and is alloyed with metals such as Nickel, Palladium, Silver, Zinc and Platinum to give it a white colour. To ensure white gold pieces have a lustrous shine, rhodium plating is also used over the top of the final alloyed metal, to give it a high gloss white finish. Rhodium is one of the most expensive metals which comes from the Platinum family of metals. Sometimes white gold metals display a hue of yellow gold, especially as the Rhodium plating wears off. When this happens the piece will need to be Rhodium plated again to restore its white lustre.
We highly recommend getting your white gold and sterling silver pieces Rhodium plated every year in order to maintain their perfect shine.
Sterling Silver
Sterling Silver is an alloy of silver containing 92.5% pure silver and 7.5% of other metals to give the metal more durability. Fine silver (99.9%) is generally too soft for producing jewellery, and is usually alloyed with copper to give it strength. Sterling Silver is usually stamped or hallmarked S925 or SS
Synergy Collection or Bi-Metal Pieces
These collections will feature the hallmarks of all metals used in their manufacture. For example a piece from our Synergy Collection will feature a S925 hallmark and a S417 hallmark to clearly define the 10 carat and sterling silver content.
