Precious materials in jewellery; no longer gold & diamonds

All of Opulent Ethics’ time recently has been spent on the designs for our new range of pomanders which will be completed in the next few months. We have already written about the pomanders at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London which have inspired us and some of the processes that we are intending to use in the production of the pomanders.

We are now considering the materials which will reside within the pomanders. Part of our brief is to challenge the idea of “preciousness”. Within the jewellery industry precious materials include gold, the higher the carat the better, platinum, palladium, diamonds and gem stones. Pieces of jewellery made using these materials can have a very large price tag.

Opulent Ethics have always chosen ethically sourced materials over large scale mined materials but for this range we decided to push the boundaries of what is precious in jewellery further.

Having watched Kate Humble on her recent TV show about the Spice Trail, Opulent Ethics were left amazed at the history and origins of everyday spices such as nutmeg, vanilla and cinnamon. We all know that saffron is an expensive ingredient but we here at Opulent Ethics did not know about the back-breaking work and hours involved in growing, harvesting and preparing saffron and other such exotic spices for sale.



....cloves....



Kate Humble with nutmeg....

                 



....and cinammon



....saffron....



We also didn’t realise that empires had been built, wars fought and communities decimated over the west’s attempted possession of these spices. The more we watched Kate Humble working with local communities, using traditional techniques and just generally smiling her way along the spice trail, the more we got thinking about how these materials are as precious as gold and diamonds, just in a different way.

These materials also tie-in nicely with pomanders as these were originally made to store 4 – 6 strong smelling ingredients such as cloves, rose petals, ambergris and scented salves, as it was believed that these would ward off disease and keep the wearer healthy.

Opulent Ethics went off and did a bit of research into these spices and other food stuffs and alternative precious materials such as cotton and found that the prices of certain food groups have been rising for years. In 2008 the average price of food across all food groups rose by 8.3% in 8 months. This meant that, on average, a family of 4 could expect to pay an extra £750 per year on their food bill.

Whilst anything from poor harvest to natural disaster to war can affect the price of foodstuffs and other commodities, it is generally those on the poverty line which are most affected by food price increases. There are households the world over which spend over 80% of their income on food. In recent years we have seen an increase in protests, riots and poverty all stemming from increases in food prices.

So Opulent Ethics has come to the conclusion that, as the world is spun by money and the increase in gold prices has made the material even more precious then the same must be true for coffee, cotton, saffron, cloves, vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg as all of these have seen significant increases in price in recent years. And, for this reason, Opulent Ethics will be considering each of these in turn in order to decide which will work best inside our precious pomanders.

Pop back in a few weeks to see which alternative precious materials Opulent Ethics chooses to challenge the idea of “preciousness” and why these materials were chosen. Now it’s time to get back to the drawing board and finish off our pomanders.

That’s all for now….