from the heart

This week we were asked why we don't use silver clay to make our jewellery, and it got us thinking of how much we have progressed since we started making fingerprint jewellery, back in 2012. When we began making fingerprint jewellery, we started out capturing fingerprints and handprints in silver clay, like most other fingerprint jewellers. It's the way most people are taught, but for us, it quickly became frustrating as the final pieces were often, well, a little bit less than perfect and they lacked finesse. We won't bore you with the technicalities - we could talk for some time as to why we felt silver clay was no longer for us, and sure, silver clay certainly has its place, but our experience taught us that while it may be the easiest way to capture a fingerprint in silver, it was not the best way. So we started looking for alternative ways to capture a fingerprint, in greater detail, and to using materials that would allow us to achieve a truly high quality surface finish. Fast forward six and a half years of living and breathing fingerprint jewellery, day and night, and we have significantly more experience, skill, tools and knowledge, and silver clay is no longer a visitor in our studio. 

These days we either fabricate our jewellery from solid metal, the old fashioned way, using saws and drills, files and flames, with a sprinkling of modern technology in the form of our super-duper deep engraver. Or we capture exquisitely detailed life size fingerprint impressions in jewellers wax, which are then hand carved into your chosen design, then cast in solid silver or gold - an ancient jewellery technique called lost-wax casting. We have chosen these methods as they produce pieces of superior quality, in terms of the detail captured, overall strength and surface finish. Our methods also allow us to work in both silver and gold, and give us a freedom of design, not reliant on cookie cutter shapes and mass produced blanks.

So when you buy a piece of Hold upon Heart fingerprint, handprint or pawprint jewellery, you are buying more than just a piece of jewellery. You are also buying the hours of love and attention we pour into each miniature work of art we create. Our aim has always been to be the makers of the most beautiful fingerprint jewellery. Jewellery that is more than just a wobbly print pressed into clay with a name scratched in. Jewellery you truly want to wear day in and day out, something that is truly beautiful, that wrings a tear from your eye when you open the box - for the right reasons! You are buying our years of experience, our constant research and endless trialling of new techniques, our desire to always strive to improve, to find the very best way to capture the most detail, to create pieces that really do have a chance of withstanding a life time of love.