What is drip silver? — SILVERS

When choos­ing jew­el­ry, you may be offered jew­el­ry made of drop sil­ver with small inclu­sions — this is not a type of met­al, but the trade name for the well-known nat­ur­al min­er­al pyrite. It is also called “radi­ant pyrites”, or mar­c­a­site, which is trans­lat­ed in Ara­bic as “cold stone”.

What are the char­ac­ter­is­tics of mar­c­a­site?

In its pure form, droplet sil­ver is very frag­ile and breaks down quick­ly, so design­ers do not use it to cre­ate jew­el­ry.

In ancient times, this min­er­al per­formed the func­tion of flint. It has also been used as a mir­ror.

Much lat­er, mar­c­a­site found its use in the man­u­fac­ture of weapons. Only in the 17th-19th cen­turies did they begin to con­sid­er it a wor­thy alter­na­tive to dia­monds due to its bright cold lus­ter and vari­ety of shades.

What is drop sil­ver? Accord­ing to the chem­i­cal com­po­si­tion, it is noth­ing more than iron sul­fide. The tone of the stone deter­mines the inclu­sion of met­als — rang­ing from gray-green to black:

• sele­na,
• waist,
• gold,
• gives
• bis­muth,
• arsenic,
• anti­mo­ny,
• cobalt.

What are the most pop­u­lar types of drop sil­ver cuts?

The orig­i­nal design of the prod­ucts, their relief and unique beau­ty are best demon­strat­ed by drop sil­ver mar­c­a­site processed in a pro­fes­sion­al jew­el­ry work­shop with a round facet cut or a pyra­mid. It pairs beau­ti­ful­ly with gem­stones such as:

• turquoise,
• pome­gran­ate,
• pearl,
• amethyst, etc.

To cre­ate the impres­sion of bright iri­des­cent tints and enhance the bril­liance of sil­ver inclu­sions, Swarovs­ki design­ers have devel­oped new types of cuts:

• “sota”,
• “dome”,
• “Chess board”
• “spike”.

The chain and men’s watch­es in dark toned sil­ver droplets in vin­tage style have a stronger metal­lic sheen than steel. They attract atten­tion from afar and give the impres­sion of expen­sive antique retro items that are part of his­to­ry.

How Much Does Drip Sil­ver Jew­el­ry Cost?

One of the advan­tages of mar­c­a­site is a more afford­able price com­pared to prod­ucts made from oth­er pre­cious met­als and stones. How­ev­er, author’s hand­made mod­els with a com­plex design, made in a sin­gle copy, can­not be too cheap.

How to prop­er­ly care for and store prod­ucts with mar­c­a­site?

This min­er­al is char­ac­ter­ized by high hard­ness (on the Mohs scale — 6–6.5 points) and scratch resis­tance. How­ev­er, this does not mean that such a pen­dant is not afraid of falls from a great height and direct blows, from which the stone can crack.

Drip sil­ver jew­el­ry requires care­ful han­dling, prop­er stor­age and care.

So that max­az­it does not stop shin­ing and does not change col­or, solu­tions that con­tain alco­hol and chem­i­cals should be avoid­ed on the prod­uct, this also applies to per­fumes and cos­met­ics.

Drip sil­ver jew­el­ry should be stored in a sep­a­rate cell of the jew­el­ry box or in a cloth bag. They should also be cleaned with a damp soft cloth, and then wiped dry with a soft cloth. In no case should ultra­sound be used to clean them, washed under a strong stream of water, immersed in boiled and hot water!

There is an opin­ion that pyrite inserts are haz­ardous to health, so jew­el­ry should be bought from trust­ed sup­pli­ers and sell­ers who mon­i­tor qual­i­ty and pro­vide cer­tifi­cates for all prod­ucts sold.