Friday 23rd October sees the doors open on the Girls' Day Out Show at the SECC, Glasgow, and Bjewelled Silver Jewellery will be there!

The three day event is the largest of its kind to be held in Scotland and will feature a host of high street fashion and beauty brands. For full details, a list of exhibitors and booking information please visit the official site at

http://www.girlsdayoutshow.co.uk/

Doors are open 10.00am till 5.30pm Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

In the era of the World Wide Web it is increasingly difficult to "please all of the people all of the time." Anybody, anywhere on earth can and, we are pleased to say, does visit our little website and read these pages and it would be nigh on impossible to cater for all of them. However, we are British and the overwhelming majority of our visitors are from the United Kingdom. We write from a British viewpoint and essentially to a British readership. Many laws, regulations and practices referred to may be uniquely British and have little relevance for a wider audience. Equally, as a result of our ethnic conditioning, there may be certain idioms, aphorisms, idiosyncrasies or just plain eccentricities used that will be meaningless to many. In all such cases we apologize to our wider audience and we hope you will excuse the "ethnocentric" nature of any material that appears on this blog or elsewhere on the site.

Sterling silver is the most widely used form of silver in jewellery so, you would think we would have a good idea what it actually is. However, in surfing the World Wide Web, I am constantly surprised to read claims for the use of "best quality" or "highest grade" sterling silver. In fact, such claims are meaningless. Sterling silver is, itself, a grade of silver, or, more correctly, silver alloy, and does not have differing grades or qualities.

Silver in its purest form is far too soft and malleable for general use and items made in it would be easily bent, damaged and abraded. To solve this the silver is alloyed, or mixed, with other materials in varying proportions to increase the strength and hardness. The resulting alloy is graded according to its purity, i.e. the proportion by weight of pure silver present, a measure known as fineness. This measure is expressed as a number; either,

• millesimally, or parts per thousand, e.g. 925ppt or simply 925,
• as a percentage, e.g. 92.5%, or
• as a decimal, e.g. .925.

Over time a number of standards of fineness have been adopted. These vary from country to country but, currently, in the United Kingdom there are four legally defined grades,

1. Fine silver being 99.9% pure,
2. Brittania silver having 958ppt pure silver
3. Sterling silver or 925 silver
4. 800 grade, that speaks for itself

Other standards you may come across are coin silver at 900ppt and French 1st Standard silver at 950ppt. Another informal grading system is nines wherin one nine fine equals .900 or coin silver and three nines fine is .999 or fine silver.

It is important to realise that in the UK, and amongst other signatory countries of the "Vienna Convention" (also called the "Hallmarking Convention"), the proportion of silver is the absolute minimum for each grade. In assaying, or testing, the silver no negative tolerance is allowed; thus, for example, an alloy with 957ppt would be graded as sterling silver, and one with 924ppt can only be marked as 800grade.

Also, the specification says nothing about the other materials used in the mix. Although copper is the most widely used base metal in silver alloy alternative metals such as germanium or zinc might be used and other materials, e.g. silicon or boron, may also be added to improve properties like tarnish resistance or reduce firescale. Some of these mixes have been patented and  trademarked under particular names, for example Argentium Sterling Silver is a recent development. However, whilst manufacturers may claim benefits or superior qualities for their various alloys, none of these differing compositions make any difference to the grade of the silver - fineness is the only criteria.

Of all the grades sterling, or 925, silver is probably the most universally adopted being the optimal balance of silver's natural characteristics of colour and shine with the strength and durability of the alloy. It is also one of the oldest defined grades having been in commercial use since the 11th century and legally defined in England since 1300A.D.

So, we are now in a position to answer our question; sterling silver is simply an alloy of silver containing a minimum of 925 parts per thousand pure silver.