Many people don’t realise that the vast majority of jewellery on the market, even from the top “luxury “jewellery brands, is actually mass-produced in factories, using moulds.

The well-known brands will, of course, hand-make their very finest pieces. I'm talking about the sort of jewellery, worth hundreds of thousands, or even millions of pounds, that you might see featured in full-page spreads in glossy magazines, or maybe being worn at red-carpet events by film-stars and celebrities.

However, most of the jewellery in their shop windows, and certainly those shown in their brochures are actually factory-made! International jewellery brands, with shops around the world need to be able to offer identical product in all of their outlets. The only way they can do this is bu using mass-production techniques.

These companies build their reputations based on those “star” pieces featured in magazines. It is not unlike the fashion industry, with it's designer catwalk shows. For 99.9% of the population pieces like that can only be a dream.

Often these items are made primarily for marketing purposes, and the chances are they will never actually sell!

Many will be broken-up and turned into something else, but they will have served their purpose, which was to generate publicity for the brand.

The public is seduced by the aura of Luxury around the designer names, and buy into the illusion that anything bearing that company’s label is equally "exclusive", not realising they are buying something mass-produced in a factory.

Let’s take a step back from the hype surrounding the “status symbol” brands, and consider what "exclusivity" actually means.

If you define "Exclusive" as “being limited, individual, rare or hard to access”, you can’t really apply this term to items that are manufactured in bulk, probably in the Far East!

The fact is, if you want a piece of jewellery that really is exclusive, you would almost certainly be better-off looking beyond the obvious worldwide brands, and seeking out much smaller businesses.

You might have to search a bit harder.

You probably won’t see full-page adverts for them in the glossy magazines, and their websites might not come up on the first page of Google, but it’s not too difficult to find jewellery designer-makers here in the UK hand-making wonderful pieces of jewellery on a one-off basis.

Rather than churning out standard product to feed an empire of  big- brand outlets around the World, the small maker is able to work with each individual client, focussing on exactly what it is they want.

These businesses are not seeking “World domination”.  They are usually run by craftsmen and women with a passion for what they do, and who take pride in creating jewellery of the highest quality, serving a select following of “those in the know”.

By seeking out a jeweller that is not a household name you will have access to superb jewellery that you won’t see anywhere else. A unique piece of jewellery individually designed and handmade just for you is about as exclusive as it gets! 

If that is what you are looking for, we would love to receive your enquiry.