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By Marlene A. Prost

Silver jewelry is the Cinderella of jewelry design. After spending decades in the shadow of her privileged sister — gold — silver has overcome her humble pedigree to become a fashionable force in high-end jewelry.

How did she do it? Designers say the public finally appreciates the craftsmanship involved in high-end silver jewelry: the quality of the metal combined with skilled finishing and spectacular use of colored stones. But the bigger reason may be the economy. Fine jewelry stores are realizing they can attract shoppers by offering quality silver jewelry as an alternative to gold — and perhaps win customers who will buy more expensive gold jewelry in the future.

“Mini Spins” stackable rings add variety to Cynthia Gale’s GeoArt line. Photo by John Curry.

“I do sense, in the finer retail stores, there is a recognition they’ve lost a valuable market, $1,000 and under,” says New York City-based designer Mark Patterson, who launched a sterling silver line last year — 9two5 — with his wife, Josette, after designing in gold for two decades. “A customer walks in, picks up a [gold] piece, sees it’s $2,000 or $1,700, and walks out of the store. . . . [Silver] is a very lucrative price range. A woman can buy it [as] a self-purchase,” he says.

Using silver instead of gold also saves money for the designer — money he or she can splurge on other design elements, especially colored stones. That’s why silver, once used mainly for modeling, has become the metal of choice for some high-profile designers.

“I always worked in platinum and 18K gold; I never touched sterling silver before,” says Patterson. “I liked the look of white metal with a lot of colored stones. I wanted to create a piece of jewelry that retailed under $1,000, but every time over the last 20 years I tried to do that, the stone was the size of a pea.”

In his sterling silver line, Patterson can invest in larger-sized center stones. For example, he blends pink sapphire with a pale rose quartz center stone set in a white silver backing. “In the past, [I would have used] only pink sapphire and some diamonds. . . . I was able to use a large center stone and still bring the price down.”

Silver jewelry gives high-end retailers — as well as their customers — an alternative, says Cynthia Gale of GeoArt by Cynthia Gale in New York City. “We developed this customer who owns a fine jewelry store and is into diamonds and platinum, who was looking for something unique so customers don’t walk out empty-handed.”

Gemstone rings in amethyst, peridot, and blue topaz from Cynthia Gale's signature GeoArt collection. Photo by John Curry. Peridot ring also pictured at top.

Designers agree that one man deserves the credit for making silver a viable high-end item: New York-based designer David Yurman.

“Luckily, because he’s well known, David Yurman started the trend of silver in the high end,” says designer Arlee Kasselman of Scottsdale, Arizona. “There’s a larger market [today] for hand-crafted, one-of-a-kind jewelry, but people don’t want to spend [on silver] what they would spend for a gold piece.” To help educate consumers, “I market to stores where the owners can explain the difference between tumbling and hand finishing, and [the cost difference of] higher-quality stones. If I don’t do that, the average consumer won’t know the difference.”

“Yurman made sterling silver what fine jewelers want to carry. He opened the door,” agrees designer Laura Gibson of Tucson, Arizona. “[Retailers] have customers who can’t afford gold, and it’s a good way to introduce them to the gold.”

Gibson started her career working with sterling silver and Swarovski crystals, because that was all she could afford. As her business grew, she expanded to 24K gold with gemstones and pearls, specializing in colorful beadwork.

Pendants from Mark Patterson’s Catalina collection combine rose quartz with pink sapphires and blue chalcedony with blue sapphires. Patterson's set of Kashmir rings with lemon quartz and tsavorite, rose quartz and pink sapphire, blue chalcedony and blue sapphire are featured at top. Photos by Chris Stein Photography.

Working in both gold and silver has expanded her price range considerably. While gold necklaces retail for $1,900 to $5,000, a similar silver necklace would cost from $250 to $900. “The style is very much the same in both; sometimes I’ll use a similar color scheme,” Gibson says. She won’t use treated stones with gold, and rarely uses precious stones with silver “because they raise the price.”

Some designers, like Caroline Streep of Miami Beach, Florida, have always chosen to use silver for practical or artistic reasons. If high-end silver is now popular, “That’s great, but I’ve always worked like this,” she says. “I have always liked combining silver and gold, because my work is large and substantial. I use silver as the canvas.” Streep’s pieces — which range from jewelry to tableware and Judaica — are in top museums, the White House, high-end galleries, and private celebrity art collections.

Gale has worked in silver since launching her GeoArt line 14 years ago. In 2002, she started the upscale Cynthia Gale line in silver and gold. Gale designs and licenses jewelry for the nation’s top museums and art centers. For example, her Austrian Opera Opulence Collection was created for The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. The sterling silver pieces with 18K gold and garnets were inspired by the chandelier in the opera house, which was a gift from Austria.

high design

There is an art to giving silver jewelry a high-priced look: It involves a combination of fine-quality metal, special finishing techniques, and spectacular colored stones. Finally, a collection is pulled together by a design element, usually the color scheme.

“There’s nothing tinny or chintzy” about Streep’s silver jewelry, she notes. “The key is a sense of color, [the use of] quality gems, and a fine finish. When you’re doing silver, it has to have a very fine finish to it. My work is finished in front and in back. It is substantial, deluxe, and unique.”

For Laura Gibson, a variety of colored gemstones, especially beads, are the essence of silver jewelry design.

For example, her latest collection, Uptown Archaeology, is sterling silver with a scheme of wavering lines and spirals of 18K and 22K gold. The earrings are set with citrine, tourmaline, and drusy; the bracelet with amethyst, ruby, pearl, tourmaline, and citrine. The effect is “a little Chinese, a little Art Deco,” Streep explains.

Streep prefers silver because of its malleability. “It takes surface texture better. I can apply greater pressure,” she says. This is particularly important because Streep’s work is hand-fabricated with a variety of methods: fusing, reticulation, forging, chiseling, and surface carving.

Kasselman literally uses the finest silver in her high-end silver jewelry: brushed .980 silver. “It’s whiter and brighter. When it’s brushed, it looks like platinum. It’s less tarnished because there’s less alloy.” She also pays attention to the quality of the elements in the piece. “All the beads are hand-crafted. I’ve tried tumbling; it’s not the same.”

Kasselman, who markets to independent jewelers, upscale craft shows, and top galleries, says she is known for working in silver with gold accents. “Because of the [relatively high] cost of my silver and high-quality gems, a lot of gold would raise the price point. So I’ll use the gold in front of the pieces,” she says. She will also work with the texture of the silver to add value and design interest. “Another thing that gives the piece a lot of dimension is brushing the surfaces with high polish. It makes the gemstones pop out.”

Despite the cost and design advantages, silver is much harder to work with than gold, says Patterson. For one thing, it is harder to solder because it oxidizes very rapidly. “As soon as [the torch hits it], it gets a blackened surface. It takes more time. You have to clean it off more often.” Second, it is much softer. “That can be a plus in forming the shape,” he says, but it makes it harder to set stones and polish. “It’s harder to work as precisely.”

Then there’s the tarnish factor. “One of the problems with sterling silver we’re all aware of is the tarnishing. We’ve tried to overcome that with rhodium-plating, which prevents tarnishing.” That type of plating is already an industry-accepted practice, since 18K white gold is routinely rhodium-plated. “It does add some cost, and [the process] is difficult to do with silver,” Patterson adds.

Perhaps the ultimate secret to high-end silver design is the creative use of colored gemstones.

“I prefer the more color-intensive stones,” says Kasselman. “I love to do a center gemstone [with] gemstones all around in all different shapes. . . . I like transparent and translucent stones. To me, they’re magical.”

“The essence of the [silver] piece is now the colored gemstones; it’s what I’ve evolved to,” says Gibson. “I’m one of the first who used beads at the high end.”

When he started designing with silver, Patterson says, his goal was to introduce more, and larger, colored gemstones. He recalls how frustrated he was with the monotonous silver and gold combinations he saw in stores and trunk shows.

“There was a large gap: the idea of lots of colored stones set in sterling. I would go to Saks Fifth Avenue and look in the silver cases, and they all looked the same — silver and an element of gold, amethyst and an element of diamond.”

Fortunately, because of its relatively low cost, silver gives designers the freedom to play around with creative design and colored stones in a way gold can’t.

“If you mess up with silver, it’s not thousands of dollars down the tube,” says Streep. That is especially important when you work “large,” as Streep does. “My work is predominately hand-fabricated; I’ll do jobs with hundreds of solder points. Because of the cost factor, if I take a piece of silver, three by six [inches], I can work with it. To work with that scale of gold is prohibitively expensive. It’s palatial. Who does objects solid gold, five inches high?”

Gold weighs a lot more, too. “To do some pieces in gold would be uncomfortable, and the prices would be astronomical,” she says.

“You don’t feel pressure [working with silver],” agrees Kasselman. “When I’m working with gold, I tend to make more conscious decisions. With gold, I play it safe. I’d rather let it flow.

CAPTIONS FOR ABOVE: Caroline Streep’s Uptown Archaeology line combines textured silver with 18K and 22K gold, amethyst, pearl, tourmaline, ruby, and citrine.

READ MORE: Designing (and selling!) jewelry with silver.

July/August 2005 • Style: Detour to Design - Reader's Choice Winner • Style: Silver's Golden Age • Sources: Mining Interrupted • News & Updates • In This Issue