What is Sterling Silver?
The short answer is that sterling silver is an alloy made up of 92.5% pure silver and 7.5% other metal or metals, usually copper. Pure silver is too soft to serve well as jewelry or tableware, and like gold, is alloyed with other metals to make it both harder and more durable.
The long answer is a little more interesting.
Sterling silver jewelry is almost always 92.5% silver and 7.5% copper, but that 7.5% can sometimes be metals like zinc and platinum, as well as more exotic materials like germanium, boron, silicon and more recently argentium. The purpose behind the inclusion of different metals is to improve some aspect of the finished product, like a resistance to tarnish or firescale (a discoloration of the metal resulting from being worked at high temperatures).
An often misunderstood property of sterling silver is its relative hypoallergenic quality. Many people believe they can only wear gold, as any other metal will irritate their skin or leave a green mark. In actuality, gold jewelry that is 18 karat or less is more likely to irritate the skin as it is alloyed with nickel—a metal that is known to cause reactions in many people. While both gold and silver are beautiful, if you have sensitive skin you are almost always better off with silver jewelry (unfortunately, high karat gold, which is purer, is often too soft for durable jewelry).
Kalinka Malinka sterling silver jewelry is hand picked and examined to ensure its authenticity and quality—not just in workmanship and finishing but also in materials. Since we work directly with the artists producing the jewelry, we have high confidence in everything we receive from them. We still check, though, just to be sure, and when working with new artists or suppliers we exercise even greater care, testing materials with silver testing kits when appropriate, to ensure the jewelry we present to our customers is the real deal.
Sterling has long been synonymous with quality, as in “a sterling reputation,” but the origin of the word isn’t precisely known. Interestingly almost all of the theories have to do with coins. One version says it’s derived from “steorling,” an Old English word for a coin with a star—referring to the old Norman penny which had a star in the center. Another version is that it’s a form of “Staer,” a word for starling, referring to a coin with four starlings on it that was circulated in England at the time of Edward the Confessor. Yet another version is that it’s a shortening of esterling or easterling, referring to coins used in England but originally made by “easterling moneyers” referring to an area of Germany that traded with the English and paid for cattle and grain with small coins stamped from silver.
If you have any other questions about sterling silver, please feel free to contact us.