Buying Silver Could Save Your Life

Silver is one of the main precious metals we work with besides gold and has recently become a sub-straight that more and more people are leaning towards when purchasing or designing a custom piece of jewelry. There is a certain quality that is only exuded in silver metal, a certain luster or glow. Someone once said that the glow that comes from silver is like the glow from the moon. Personally, I like this description because it is the truth.

Beyond it's unique beauty, Silver is far less expensive than gold. The reasons for the difference in the price of silver and gold are complicated and numerous, but this means that you, the consumer are able to reap benefits -beautiful, sculpted pieces of wearable, silver jewelry. Because of it's reduced prices, you may find a certain amount of freedom when designing your next piece. The jewelers here at Associates are skilled, talented and willing to work within your budget weather you are using gold or silver. Remember, jewelry can last forever, if you are going to put money into something, why not put money into something that lasts a lifetime and will hold value beyond the physical item itself -sentimental value.

Also, did you know that the purchase of silver could save your's or someone else's life someday? If you ever find your self stranded, with only dirty water to drink, you can place your silver jewelry inside of a glass of filthy water and it will naturally clean the water for you? When settlers moved across the American West, they would purify a container of water by putting a silver dollar in it overnight, and silver dollars were used to keep milk from spoiling. NASA is even using silver in space ships to recycle raw sewage to be use for drinking, cooking and washing.

Next time you go to buy jewelry, consider silver. If nothing else, it could save your life someday!

For your health!

How To Care For Your Precious Pearls

The earth has given Jewelers many materials to work with. We use gold, silver, diamonds, wood, gems and precious stones of all kinds. One Precious stone we love to work with is the Pearl.

A pearl is a delicate and beautiful, little, irritant. Irritating to the oyster that is (we love pearls). Typically when a pearl is made naturally, it starts with a little grain of sand. Somehow a grain of sand might get stuck inside of particular species of oyster. As a defense mechanism the oyster will start to secrete a fluid that hardens around the sand spec. After about 5-10 years, if the oyster was fortunate to live that long, it will have created a precious pearl.

Since Pearls are not created like many other precious gemstones, millions of years and thousands of pounds of pressure; they are often easier to damage than other stones. Due to the softer nature of Pearls, they are easier to scratch or be damaged in chemicals. If not cared for correctly, a pearl can quickly lose it’s luster or be lost forever.

Tricks and Techniques to care for your pearls:

Due to the nature of pearls you should always remove a pearl ring or bracelet when preparing food. Some foods contain acids that could eat away at your pearls. Also, if you are going to go swimming, we recommend removing your pearls so as not to be lost or damaged by the chlorine and chemicals in swimming pools.

If you have a pearl ring, we recommend you remove it by holding onto the band and not the pearl. The less contact made with the pearl the better, without being excessive. Remember, pearls are jewelry that was meant to be worn and loved on your body. After you remove your pearl jewelry it is always a good idea to wipe the pearl with a (wet or dry) soft cloth. Although your body oils can improve the look of your pearl you might not want the acid from your perspiration to remain on the pearl. If you perspire heavily, you may want to think of using different gems in your jewelry design.

If you have a string of pearls it is a good idea to get them restrung every 6 months. The worst pearl stories I hear are of women who lose half their pearls when their necklace breaks. A break can happen unexpectedly from tension, but it is best to try and prevent pearl loss from weak string.

Cleaning Pearl Jewelry:

As described above, Pearls are more delicate than other precious gems and so they take a different kind of care when cleaning them as well. Below I have created a little list that you may find useful when cleaning your pearl jewelry.

Wash hands before handling pearls to remove any perspiration
Never use chemicals on when cleaning jewelry. (chlorox, bleach, ammonia… etc.)
Clean your pearls with a mild soap.
Remove pearls when applying lotion or moisturizers.
wipe with a soft or damp cloth immediately after removal.
If soap and water do not clean your pearls to satisfaction, consider using a pearl cleaning solution.
Please, if you have any questions about pearls or pearl care do not hesitate to call us.

Wally Anderson

Wally Anderson is a business that is also owned by Associate Jewelers, Inc. and has been a valuable part of our success.

“Our 13 person team ships pendants, rings, and custom pieces to hundreds of fine jewelry stores around the country. The materials we use for all our jewelry are of the highest quality, hand-picked gems and purest metals we can buy. We are proud to offer what we feel is one of the finest collections of personal jewelry you can find.” -Wally Anderson Website

On this website you can find numerous pictures and descriptions of our designs. We have Pendants, Rings, Wildlife collection and more.

If you have any questions about how Wally Anderson relates to Associate Jewelers, send us a little email, or check back here on the blog soon.

Communication Is Key To Success

We have recently touched on this a bit on our website, but we thought it would be a great idea to reiterate again here in our blog. Associate Jewelers, Inc. has a very large customer base which is comprised of many different components. We have the walk in customers who grace us with surprise visits. We have many different clients that are wholesalers and many who ship us damaged jewelry that needs repair. Overall, each component is equally important. It is in our ability to be flexible that we pride ourselves.

Unfortunately and fortunately, we are one of the only jewelry businesses that let’s third parties write instructions about repairs. This being said, we would like to stress how important clear communication is to our success. On occasion we will have clients that have written poor instructions about an item that needs repair. When this happens we are chagrined to say that we may be forced to do repairs that are not what the customer of our clients wants.

Help Us Help You

To prevent errors in repairs do to miscommunication we would like to encourage each of our clients to take extra care when writing out repair instructions. As much as we would like to be, we are not mind readers. Our work starts by looking at your instructions and should your instructions have strange symbols or sloppy hand writing it could make deciphering the text hard. Please take your time when writing instructions. Bulleted or numbered lists are often the most efficient means of communicating these types of instructions.

1. Repair filigree on both sides of ring. Must match exactly. $300 k

2. Supply and set two matching sapphires. $50 k

3. Remove old white gold tips and repairs. $55k

4. Retip (laser) platinum tips. $65k

5. Repair places where the old repairs were. $67k

6. New shank, size 8, make shank round $135k

This would be a great list because it not only has mention of what you need to have done, but also the keystone price that you have given the customer. If these numbers don’t match ours then we know that we need to work out different arrangements. We understand that you are here to make a profit, information like this is helpful for us to give you the best service possible.

INDIAN WEDDINGS: GOLD PRICES INCREASE YEARLY

Every year the price of gold gets higher and higher. There are many factors for this; inflation, the economy, civil unrest in major gold producing areas, natural disasters and Indian Wedding Season. Yes, it's a fact, Indian jewelers buy up as much gold as they think they will need for the upcoming wedding season which in turn makes gold prices spike globally. The upcoming season goes from November to December. Because of the time it takes to manufacture the intricate wedding jewelry, statues and garments traditionally worn in Indian weddings we are seeing the spike now.

Actually, it's quite incredible how much gold India buys each year. It is well known that over 20% of all gold purchased annually is purchased by India. Even more impressive, it is thought that 12% of all Gold refined in the history of the world is in the households of India. Over the past decade, gold has risen by an average of 10.1 percent from September through to December.


To understand why India has such a love affair with gold, one would have to delve deep into India's illustrious history and pick apart religious beliefs and texts.

Here is what the Bombay Times has to say about the matter:
"In India, it always was and still is, much more than just a precious metal. It is part of the fabric of our culture and an inseparable part of our belief system. It is the essence from which the universe was created. In a dark and lifeless universe, the Creator deposited a seed in the waters he had made from his own body. The seed became a golden egg, bright and radiant as the sun. From this cosmic egg of gold was born the incarnation of the Creator Himself - Brahma. From the root word Hri meaning imperishable, comes Hiranya, the ancient name for gold. Brahma is referred to as Hiranyagarbha - the one born of gold" -Bombay Times

No-matter the reason their love of jewelry, their insatiable need for gold is both a bless and a burden on the worlds jewelry culture. The beautiful things they create are some of the many wonders of the world and have been inspiration for many of our jewelry designs. On the other hand, the effect they have on gold prices touches every single person who goes to buy jewelry.

Is Growing Jewelry the next big "Green" fashion trend?

"Growing Jewelry is a redefinition of modern values. It is a clash of jewelry and gardening; couture and organism. The collection of this hand jewelry is designed for people in metropolitan cities and is an experiment in drawing nature toward man, as nature being the presupposition of life."

Growing Jewelry could be the next new and exciting niche in the jewelry fashion world and Hafsteinn Juliusson is the creative mind behind the idea. Juliusson is a creative engineer of Icelandic origins who wanted to bring something special to all of us who live inside of the city, a little nature.

By combining stainless steel and a specific Icelandic moss, Juliusson has created something completely out of the standard jewelry box and into a new realm of "Green" fashion. By taking micro gardening to a wearable level, he has breached the gap many fashionistas have with the whole green movement. When a client who may not appreciate gems like diamonds or sapphires wants somethings other than the standard inlays, they may jump at the chance to purchase Growing Jewelry.



Growing Jewelry, like all living things, needs water and a possible trim once in a while. The moss will live for an average of 6 months, but I have not heard anything about replacement moss.



The jewelry is on display at Reykjavik Art Museum, where it is watered and kept alive with the help of grow lights.

A Little About Burins

Burin is a french word meaning "cold chisel", people may use the word when referring to the most used engraving tool (pictured below).
An engraving burin is mostly used by engravers, but is implemented in other professions, like print making. Burins usually are shaped like a pencil with an exaggerated eraser. The larger, "eraser head" fits snugly into the palm of an engraver's hand while the sharper metal end is used to carve lines, shapes and designs into metals.

There are an infinite amount of shapes that an engraver can turn their burins into. The large variety of shapes give the engraver the ability to find a tool for every use.

• A tint burin consists of a square face with teeth, enabling the creation of many fine, closely spaced lines.

• A stipple tool allows for the creation of fine dots.

• A flat burin consists of a rectangular face, and is used for cutting away large portions of material at a time.