Recycle Reuse

Every piece, every time.

When I sit down to start working with metal, I always use responsibly sourced precious metals and strive to use every piece I cut.

If I have bits of gold left, I save them to get recycled. If I have bits of silver left, I melt it down to use on other designs. What’s really great about using precious metals is that it will almost always get recycled. You can often find me, on all fours, searching for that bit of gold that flew off my workspace.

This reminds me of when I was about 10 years old (1980), my grandmother had an old, broken gold necklace that she decided to sell for the money. The price of gold had “skyrocketed” and she wanted to take full advantage of the high price.

I questioned the entire situation, as my 10 year old brain couldn’t understand the precious metal commodity thing. The necklace was a string of gold balls, much like a pearl necklace but gold, and it was pretty heavy. At ten years old I thought this was a grand idea because certainly that was not my style.

With a portion of her proceeds, she took the family out for an expensive dinner. I remember how proud she was and especially how happy she was that we were all there, because of that broken, old necklace.

Love you and miss you Gramma.