Sterling Silver Jewelry: Silver & The Seven Metals

If you asked someone to find a representative of silver or gold in nature, the chances are their eyes would dart skyward to the attendant lights of the Sun and the Moon. However, their association between metal and planet is far from being a spontaneous or independent action, these connections have been subconsciously engraved on our psyche since time immemorial.

It started as early as 5500 B.C. during the ‘Chalcholithic’ period of western Anatolia, an area that corresponds to modern Turkey. Preceding both iron and bronze ages, the Chalcholithic period is translated into plain English as the Copper Age. This period marked the transition of Neolithic humans into the first organized societies. The Copper Age concept is based upon the transformation of metal ores through process metallurgy into implements and items of jewelry such as rings, earrings, pendants, necklaces and bracelets.

Form the Chalcholithic period to 1400 A.D., there were only seven metals known to man. These metals are: Gold, Silver, Copper, Iron, Tin, Lead and Mercury and are known collectively as the ‘Seven Metals Of Antiquity.’ Mercury was mistakenly thought to be a type of Silver, its Greek name: ‘Hydrargyrum’ meant ‘Watery Silver,’ which later evolved into the English ‘Quick Silver.’

The common notion of these pre-scientific periods was that the Earth, and everything in it, was a reflection of the heavens: ‘As It Is Above So It Is Below.’ This was the basis of alchemy, the precursor to modern science. So when alchemists and high priests looked above to the gods of the seven visible planets, they found their sacred answer below embodied by the equivalent properties and number in the ‘The Seven Metals Of Antiquity.’ The connection was made.

During this period, civilizations from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia, Greece venerated the seven metals to such an extent that all were placed amongst the heavens each one allocated to one of the seven visible planets and their respective deities. For the Egyptians gold was the metal of the sun and its god Amun, silver was appropriated to the Moon and the ‘Mother Heaven’ Isis. The Greeks appointed copper, used in ornamentation and jewelry, to the planet and goddess of beauty Venus. The Greeks used iron for the fabrication of instruments of warfare, and thus associated it with the planet and god of war Mars. Accordingly lead was associated with Saturn, tin with Jupiter and Mercury of course speaks for itself.

The next step in these ancient associations was designating each metal with specific symbols. Although evolving slightly overtime these same symbols were to be used by alchemists such as Boyle and Newton right up until the 18th Century A.D. In their hieroglyphs the ancient Egyptians had already symbolized the Sun and Amun with the circle denoting perfection, and the half circle or crescent to represent the Moon and Isis. For the Egyptians gold with its shimmering radiance, was the most perfect metal and so earned itself the perfect circle. Silver was secondary to gold in its perceived value, and so its shimmering luster was chosen to represent the Moon and its half circle. Consequently the less noble a metal was considered the more flawed the circle, this concept spilled over into the later culture of classical Greece. The Greeks used iron for warfare, and associated it with Mars, copper was used in jewelry and was appropriated to Venus: Both these metals ancient alchemic signs are still used today to denote male and female gender.

The deities of the seven planets and their related seven metals are also intertwined in another concept that revolves around the number Seven…In ancient Greece the moon goddess was called Selene, later in Rome she was known as Luna. The Silver light of the Moon goddesses was celebrated by ‘Dies Lunae’ meaning ‘Moon Day’. We know that day as Monday…One of the Seven days of a week.

This article was written by David-John Turner for the Silvershake website, an online retailer of silver jewelry at wholesale prices. Purchase today and get gemstone silver jewelry worth up to $60...Free!

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Sterling Silver Jewelry: Deities Of The Silver Moon

The roots of the Moon’s appropriation to femininity, and the subsequent connection of Silver to them both lie in the ancient lands of Mesopotamia, once home to the world’s most advanced civilizations during the Neolithic period.

Observing the Moon’s waxing and waning within a 28-day cycle, the Mesopotamians were the first to connect the synchronicity between our sister planet’s movements and the female reproductive cycle. This led to the Moon symbolizing fertility, and its eventual appropriation with the Mesopotamian god and goddess, Nanna and Ningal.

Ningal and Nanna were the patron deities of one of the most important cities in southern Mesopotamia, Ur. They resided in the temple called Ikinugal, meaning the 'House of Moonlight’ and were often represented by a crescent Moon shape. Archeologists believe that this shape was not only used to signify the crescent Moon, but also the shape of the womb and equally the horns of a bull, a sacred symbol of fertility in Mesopotamia and the successive cultures of Greece and Rome.

Although the Mesopotamians had already recognized the seven planets, assigning each one a god or goddess, it was the Egyptians who were the first to appropriate the planets and their deities with metals, starting with gold and Silver. Alchemists in Egypt represented gold in hieroglyphs as a circle, the sign of perfection, and appropriating it with the Sun and its singular ruling male deity: Amun. Silver was symbolized by a half-circle, secondary to gold’s full circle, and represented by the moon and a multitude of inferior female goddesses including Isis. These gender-biased associations may also provide part of the answer as to why silver has always been perceived secondary to gold.

All seven visible planets and their gods were finally associated with the seven known metals in the classical Greek period. For instance, Iron used for the fabrication of instruments of warfare, became associated with the male god of war Mars. Whereas pliant copper used in ornamentation and jewelry, was appropriated to Venus. Both these metals ancient alchemic signs are still used today to denote male and female gender.

The seven metals were highly revered in Greek culture, not only being identified with the gods and planets themselves, but were also used to symbolize their generations. First, born from Chaos, came the Titan Gods. The Titans marked the ‘Golden Age’ of classical Greek mythology; the succeeding generation of gods were the Olympians who gave rise to the ‘Silver Age.’

Born from the Titan’s ‘Golden Age,’ the first Greek goddess of the Moon was known as Selene. Although she survived the Titans she wasn’t fully accepted in the Greek Olympian pantheon, and never became one of the twelve great gods and goddesses of the Olympian ‘Silver Age’. Interestingly, Selene as is the case for many ancient Greek deities, gave her name to a metal: Selenium. A metal, similar to the tales of Selene, whose properties change in relation to the density of light.

Selene, daughter of Hyperion and Theia, was the sister of Eos the goddess of the dawn and Helios the Olympian sun god. It was said that everyday Selene bathed in the sea waiting for her brother Helios to complete his journey across the sky. Selene represented the evening and the night, and in this sense was often depicted as a young woman with a lily-white complexion. She traveled across the night sky in a Silver chariot pulled by two horses carrying a torch and adorned with a diadem of a half moon on her head.

Selene, a romantic favorite with painters and poets, was known for her many ‘liaisons d’amour’. Two of her most notorious affairs were with Pan and Zeus. However, Selene’s most famous love affair was with a handsome mortal called Endymion, who she visited each night kissing him to sleep. Selene begged Zeus to give Endymion anything he wished, hopping that he would ask for immortality, but Endymion was vain and instead asked Zeus to preserve his good looks for eternity. Zeus complied, putting the young man in eternal sleep.

During both Greek and Roman Empires the goddesses of our sister Moon, much like the planet itself, had dark and light sides and were often represented in an almost schizophrenic manner. This symbolic significance becomes clearer through understanding the physical nature of the Moon and its affect on the Earth. The different cycles of the Moon were represented by different goddesses and their attributes. Selene, known to the Romans as Luna, was the ‘Waxing Moon' fertile and full she was the mother goddess pregnant with life. Artemis, known as Diana to the Romans, was the virgin goddess of the hunt reflecting the qualities of the ‘New Moon'. Hecate, Trivia to the Romans, was the goddess of the waning or Moonless night, cloaked in mysticism with the power to heal or transform.

As mentioned before the Romans had their equivalent of Selene in the form of Luna. Appearing in much the same way with a crescent Moon on her head, and driving a silver two-horse chariot, Luna was also connected to the Moons changing faces. Luna could be kind as much as she could be crazed; it is from the latter that we derive the term “Moonstruck’, ‘Lunatic’ and ‘Lunacy’. The etymological roots of Lunatic and its appropriation to the goddess’ name are related to bi-polar disorder or cyclothymia: an excited mental state where moods can be altered by light intensity.

For the Romans the Moon's dark side was symbolized by the goddess Trivia, goddess of the crossroads said to appear when the ebony Moon shone. Trivia was often depicted as having three heads: a dog, a snake and a horse and was usually seen with two ghost hounds. Often misunderstood as the goddess of witchcraft or evil, Trivia did many heroic deeds including the rescue of Persephone, Demeter's daughter, from Hades in the Underworld. Trivia was said to haunt a three-way crossroad, each of her heads facing in a certain direction from this the Romans gave her the name Trivia.

Understanding the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman view of the Moon it is clear to see how it and silver appropriated a female persona. During the height of the Greek Empire, the Moon it’s goddesses and the connection to silver became so important that they were immortalized into one of the most amazing feats of the ancients: The Temple Of Artemis: One Of The 7 Ancient Wonders.

This article was written by David-John Turner for the Silvershake website, an online retailer of silver jewelry at wholesale prices. Purchase today and get gemstone silver jewelry worth up to $60...Free!

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Sterling Silver Jewelry: The 7th Wonder The Temple Of Artemis

The ‘Seven Ancient Wonders’ were the Great Pyramid at Giza, the Hanging Gardens at Babylon, the statue of Zeus at Olympia, the mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Lighthouse at Alexandria and finally the temple at Ephesus in Asia Minor.

The Anatolian Temple at Ephesus, located near the modern city of Izmir in Turkey, was one of the most beautiful architectural structures ever built. Originally constructed in the 7th century B.C. under the patronage of the immensely rich Lydian king Croesus, the marble temple was built in honor of the Greek goddess of hunting, fertility and the Moon, Artemis. The interior of the temple was lavishly furnished with bronze statues, sculpted by the most skilled artists of their time: Pheidias, Polycleitus, Kresilas, and Phradmon.

Croesus’ intentions behind the building of the temple were not only related to the Goddess Artemis herself, known as Cybele to the Anatolians, but also to strengthen ties between his Lydian kingdom and the expanding Greek empire. Both countries were rich; Lydia from the wealth of electrum in the Paktolas River and the Silver laden Tarsus Mountains and Greece from the Laurian Silver mines on which the expansion of Athens was founded. Furthermore, under the reign of Croesus the first coin, the Lydian Trite, used as monetary exchange was introduced, an idea the king shared with the Greek Solon who later formed the weight standards for the Athenian silver drachmas.

The temple of Artemis, much like the Hephaisteion of Athens built in honor of Hephaestus the god of the forge and jewelry, was used both as a place of religious worship and a marketplace. It was tradition at this time to share wealth with the gods, so the temple itself was strategically placed at the end of the royal trade routes that stretched all the way from southeastern Europe to the Indus valley and beyond in India. King, Queen, Merchant and Tourist pilgrims came from the far reaches of the Earth to pay homage to the goddess Artemis, recent archeological excavations have shown evidence of artifacts from as far as Persia and India. These included gold and silver jewelry, ivory statuettes, and precious and semi-precious gemstones such as sapphire, garnet and lapis lazuli.

The healthy political and financial climate between Lydia and Greece deepened the already existing association between Artemis, or Cybele, the Moon and Silver. Artemis was of the ‘Silver Age’ of Olympian goddesses; she was the daughter of Zeus and Leto and the twin sister of Apollo. A symbol of fertility, and also mysteriously virgin, she was often depicted riding a silver chariot through the night sky, shooting arrows of silver moonlight to Earth below. She was the goddess of wild animals and was believed to roam mountains and forests with her nymphs hunting deers, lions and panthers killing them softly with her silver bow and arrows.

Artemis was a friend to mortals, dancing through the countryside in silver sandals and giving her divine protection to wild beasts and the very young. Greeks sometimes called her Cynthia after her birthplace on Mt. Kynthos on Delos. In the Odyssey (15.403) Odysseus is told a story of a wondrous island, Syria, where neither hunger nor old age exists. When the inhabitants of this island had reached the end of their lives as decreed by the Fates, Artemis would fly down and painlessly kill them with their silver bows.

On the night of 21 July 356 BC, a man named Herostratus burned the temple to ground in an attempt to immortalize his name, that same night in Macedonia Alexander the Great was born. Plutarch the Greek historian wrote later: ‘Artemis was too busy taking care of the birth of Alexander and couldn’t send help to her threatened temple’. A few years later ‘en route’ to conquer the world, Alexander the Great offered to rebuild the destroyed temple, but Artemis’ temple wasn’t rebuilt until after his death in 323 BC. Surviving ensuing occupations by Romans and Goths, the temple eventually fell to Christianity when in 401 A.D. St John Chrysostom ordered the temple to be torn down.

This article was written by David-John Turner for the Silvershake website, an online retailer of silver jewelry at wholesale prices. Purchase today and get gemstone silver jewelry worth up to $60...Free!
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Sterling Silver Jewelry: The God Of Jewelry

According to classical Greek mythology, born from Chaos, came the Titan Gods led by Cronus. The Titans held dominion over the Earth and the planets of the Solar system. This was until Cronus was murdered and dethroned by his son Zeus, who also happned to be the leader of the succeeding generation of Olympian gods. Overtime the 12 gods of Mount Olympus deposed of most of the Titan gods, however some of them survived, one was Prometheus.

Of all the Titan gods Prometheus was said to be the wisest, his name meant ‘Forethought’ due to his ability to envision the future. Prometheus, recognizing humanity’s potential, was mankind’s benefactor, and wished to bestow upon us the knowledge of the gods. One day Prometheus, acting against the wishes of Zeus and the Olympian gods, stole the flames of enlightenment and gave them to humankind. In reprisal Zeus, desiring that fire’s powers be reserved for the divine, punished Prometheus for his act of kindness towards humanity with perpetual damnation.

Hephaestus, one of Zeus’ many offspring and the Olympian god of smiths, was ordered to produce manacles that would chain the disgraced Prometheus to the side of Mount Caucasus. Prometheus would then became the daily buffet of a giant eagle, which each and everyday would swoop down from the mountaintop, ripping his liver from his body. After suffering this torture for a thousand years Prometheus was eventually rescued by Hercules.

Zeus was merciless, and even Hephaestus didn’t escape the ruling Olympian God’s wrath. A kind and peace-loving god, Hephaestus was the only god who suffered from any physical deformity, for this he was cast out of Olympia. This is a passage from Homer’s tales of Troy, ‘The Iliad’, recounting Hephaestus’ expulsion from Olympus the incident that led to his becoming a smith and creator of rare gold and silver jewelry beauty:

“...That would have been a dangerous time, had not Thetis and Eurynome taken me in-- Eurynome, daughter of the tidal Ocean. Nine years I stayed, and fashioned works of art, silver jewelry, brooches and spiral bracelets, necklaces, in their smooth cave, round which the stream of Ocean flows with a foaming roar: and no one else knew of it, gods or mortals...”

The Greeks associated Hephaestus with electrum, the naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver, and appointed him god of the forge and the subterranean fire. The Greeks believed that Hephaestus discovered ways to work silver, gold, iron, and copper, in the depths of Volcanoes from where he derived his Roman name Vulcan, the Romans believed him to have his forge in the base of Mount Etna.

Hephaestus, creator of great beauty, was a highly skilled blacksmith and artisan, he was reputed for his devotion to his forge, where he crafted gold and silver jewelry, drinking vessels, weapons: including Zeus' thunderbolts, Artemis’ silver arrows, Apollo’s silver bow and Achilles’ armor.

Still standing today at the heart of the ancient site of the Agora in Athens, there stands a temple dedicated to Hephaestus called the Hephaisteion. The temple’s construction was started in 449 B.C. However, the Agora itself was in use as early as the 6th century B.C., at the time of the monetary reforms of Solon and the silver production of the Laurium mines, as the financial, judicial and cultural center of Athens.

The Athenian Agora wasn’t the only architectural marvel to be built around tales of deities, gold, silver and jewelry. At the same time in Asia Minor a wonder was under construction in honor of another deity whose roots lay firmly intertwined with silver…


This article was written by David-John Turner for the Silvershake website, an online retailer of silver jewelry at wholesale prices. Purchase today and get gemstone silver jewelry worth up to $60...Free!
Copyright © www.silvershake.com. All Rights Reserved.

Sterling Silver Jewelry Hallmarking History In England Part II

The London assay office had already established its hallmark with the leopard’s head of Edward ‘Longshanks’, the mark it still carries today. After establishing their own assay offices, both Birmingham and Sheffield sought to establish their own hallmarks. The story goes that both party’s representatives from the two assay offices, met in an inn named the Crown and Anchor, and tossed a coin to decided which town would have which symbol. Thus, Sheffield adopted the ‘Crown’ and Birmingham the ‘Anchor’ as their hallmarks.

Ironically, Mathew Boulton was the first to have a batch of sterling silver work put under the hammer by the Birmingham assay office, which did not come up to the necessary sterling silver standard. Boulton undeterred, went on to found the Soho manufactory in Handsworth making sterling silver jewelry, buckles, buttons, toys, plates and silverware. Boulton later achieved international notoriety with the ‘Lunar Society’ and James Watt, building the first commercial steam trains that would drive the Industrial revolution the world over.

By the late 1800's the silver, gold and sterling silver jewelry trade in Birmingham was employing 7500 people. The trade peaked in the 19th Century after the gold rushes in America and Australia, and by 1913 the number of craftspeople working in Birmingham’s gold and sterling silver jewelry trade had risen to 50,000. Attracted by the convenience of the Assay office and surrounding silver and gold bullion dealers, Birmingham’s jewelry quarter burgeoned with skilled sterling silver jewelry craftsmen and women specializing as electroplaters, engravers, chain makers, gemstone setters and silver stampers.

After two successive World Wars, interspersed by economic depression, Birmingham’s sterling silver jewelry manufacturing industry went into decline. At present, most of the city’s businesses have become ‘Service’ related, and although Birmingham’s gold and sterling silver jewelry industry still exists it is but a shadow of its former glory.

In 1999, a new format of English hallmarking on objects of silverware and sterling silver jewelry was initiated consisting of a maker’s mark, the assay office insignia and a .925 symbol. Optional extra marks are the ‘Lion Passant’, the UK sign of sterling silver, and the date letter stamp. The standardizing of the date letter sequence, shared by all four remaining assay offices in Birmingham, Edinburgh, London and Sheffield, were introduced to bring the UK gold and sterling silver jewelry system closer in line with other European Union standards. However, the problem remains that many countries throughout the world have different standards and specifications that vary considerably, making it difficult for one country to accept another's hallmarking as equivalent to its own.

With the advent of globalization, ‘Free trade’ and the Internet, finding the problematic solution to the standardization of world gold and sterling silver jewelry hallmarking has become increasingly important. In 1972, the EFTA (European Fair Trade Association) consisting of Austria, Finland, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom held the ‘Vienna Convention’ where the first European hallmarking laws for gold and sterling silver jewelry were put into force.


The convention enables specially designated assay offices throughout member countries of the EFTA to apply, after testing, a common control mark to articles of precious metals including gold and sterling silver jewelry in accordance with the Convention. The articles bearing the Convention marks, called CCM: Common Control Marks, are accepted without further testing or marking by the assay office of any destination country that is an EFTA member.

Although this system is not worldwide as yet, Denmark, Ireland, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands have since joined the Convention. And Bahrain, France, Israel, Lithuania, Poland, Spain and several Eastern European countries have shown an interest in the Convention, and are preparing for application.

This article was written by David-John Turner for the Silvershake website, an online retailer of silver jewelry at wholesale prices. Purchase today and get gemstone silver jewelry worth up to $60...Free!

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Sterling Silver Jewelry Hallmarking History In England Part I

To receive a hallmark, items of precious metal such as sterling silver jewelry must undergo tests carried out by the assay office, this is done to ascertain if the object’s content of precious metal meets the standard requirements of purity. The term hallmark comes from ‘Mark of the Hall of Goldsmiths’ in London, who in 1327 were the first official assay hallmarking office decreed by Parliament, to control the standard of precious metals circulating in the British Isles. To this day they still operate one of four authorized assay offices in Britain.

Forms of marking precious metal objects such as sterling silver jewelry were around from the Byzantine period in the early part of the first millennium A.D. However, it was under the rule of king Edward I of England, known as ‘Longshanks’ due to his size, that official hallmarking of sterling silver jewelry and other silver objects was first established. ‘Longshanks’, termed ‘The Hammer’ as a result of his merciless subjugation of Wales and Scotland, was both feared and revered by friend and foe alike.

If you have seen ‘Braveheart’ then you are already familiar with the films depiction of Edward ‘Longshanks’ as a crazed tyrant: however, in reality he was more diplomatic. ‘Longshanks’ founded the British Parliament based on the premise of ‘Parlez’, from the French verb meaning ‘To talk’, where subjects could approach the King to resolve problems. He also reestablished the ‘Magna Carta’, and introduced constitutional government passing laws such as “No taxation without representation”: meaning that no tax could be levied without consent of the realm and Parliament.

Besides waging wars, fighting crusades, having 16 children and other sovereignly pursuits, Longshanks also bought into effect one of the first consumer protection laws, a statute that regulated all silver jewelry, silverware and silver currency to be manufactured to the standard of .925 parts pure Silver to the 1000. This level of purity had been coined ‘Sterling Silver’ under the reign of the first ‘Plantagenet’ king, Henry II during the previous century, it is from this period that the term ‘Pound Sterling’ became synonymous with English currency.

To secure his exacting standards, Edward Longshanks decreed that all precious metal objects, including sterling silver jewelry, were to be assayed by “Guardians of the Craft”, who would then mark the approved sterling silver jewelry items with a leopard's head: signifying the hallmark of the London assay office still in use today. By the later stages of the 14th Century hallmarking had been refined to encompass not just the assay office’s stamp of approval, but also the marks of the individual maker and the date system allowing the accurate dating of any sterling silver jewelry or silverware piece.

Three hundred years later, at the turn of the 17th Century, King George I succeeded to the English throne. At this time, England’s .925 Sterling Silver coinage was being melted down by less scrupulous craftsmen to make sterling silver jewelry and ornamentation. To avert this, and protect the intrinsic value of the currency, King George decreed that a new standard, called ‘Britannia’ Silver comprising of .958 parts Silver to the 1000, was compulsory in the manufacturing of silverware and silver jewelry. If the objects in question, tested by the assay office, were found to contain England’s currency standard of .925 parts to the 1000 then the Silversmith responsible faced a heavy price.

When an article of silver jewelry didn’t comply with the required standard the assay offices were ordered to destroy the sterling silver jewelry object and fine the Silversmith. If the Silversmith offended for a second time, he faced public humiliation in the ‘Pillory’ stocks and was pelted with rotten fruit. If he did it again a limb would be hacked off, and the persistent offender would eventually be put to death. The reason behind these Draconian enforcements, the ultimate in sterling silver jewelry quality control, was that the manufacturing of Silver was united with the minting of currency. Therefore, by debasing these metals a Silversmith was undermining the coin of the realm, a treasonable offence. However, by 1720 the enforcement of the Britannia standard was more or less dropped and the Sterling Silver standard restored.

With the expansion of the English Empire, and its accumulated trade wealth, other cities outside of London such as Sheffield, Liverpool, Manchester, Chester and Birmingham prospered. Referred to as the city of a thousand and one trades Birmingham, situated in England’s midlands, boomed as it embraced the Industrial Revolution. In 1760 ‘John Betts & Sons’ opened the first precious metal refinery in Birmingham’s Hockley suburb to the north of the city.

The foundries attracted many different trades people: gunsmiths, button manufacturers, toy makers, Silversmiths and sterling silver jewelry craftsmen who all established different areas as the center for their workshops. However, the Silversmiths still had to make a long journey to Chester or London by horse and carriage to have their products assayed. The Industrial period bought about incredible wealth, but it bought poverty to most forcing people to commit desperate deeds in order to survive. A criminal trend, in the spirit of Robin Hood, which became very popular was the impoverished gentleman’s act of relieving the nouveaux riche industrialists of their wealth along England’s highways.

This extract is taken from The London Evening Post’s article on Plunket and Maclaine’s robbery of Horace Walpole, writer and son of Sir Robert Walpole, lord of the treasury and the English prime minister, in November 1749. “The Man with the Blunderbuss swore he would shoot him, if he spoke, bid him give him his Watch, and then riding up to the Chariot, they took Mr. Walpole’s Sword, and some Silver from the Footman, and rode off to Kensington Gate.”

Dick Turpin, Tom King, Captain Gallagher, ‘Swift Nick’, Plunket and Maclaine …all became English folk heroes to the cries of ‘Stand and deliver’. However, for the likes of Industrialists such as Mathew Boulton and Birmingham’s sterling silver jewelry manufacturers these felons spelt financial ruin. In 1773 after intense lobbying in London’s Parliament by Matthew Boulton, owner of Birmingham’s famous Soho manufactory, permission was granted for both Birmingham and Sheffield to have their own assay offices.

This article was written by David-John Turner for the Silvershake website, an online retailer of silver jewelry at wholesale prices. Purchase today and get gemstone silver jewelry worth up to $60...Free!

Copyright © www.silvershake.com. All Rights Reserved.