Fancy a look into how our pieces are made?
Our Craftsmanship
First we have to take you to the idyllic land of Bali. Our founder, Leanne, has a strong pull to the island, with Indonesian roots and her unfading love for Bali’s culture, people and beauty, and so she found it incredibly important to create a brand that holds the importance of this little paradise in each handcrafted piece.
With the release of our newest collection, we wanted to take some time to share with you how and where your beloved Wild pieces are made. As a jewellery brand that has built its ethical foundations on the importance of local talent and expertise, high-standard working conditions, and sustainably-conscious sourcing, we want to show how each piece you buy is made with care and consciousness.
See how your favourite pieces are handcrafted in our small-scale workshop below.
Along with showing an insight into our workshop and the people involved, we also loved the idea of sharing with you a step-by-step guide to how Wildthings' jewellery is crafted, to emphasise the time and talent taken to create your precious pieces!
With artistry and skill, comes beautiful creations: A step-by-step guide to Wildthings Jewellery
1. We aren’t a fast fashion brand, so we believe that in order to keep our brand slow yet fresh, we release only two collections per year. The first step of course is our designs! It takes weeks of inspiration and conceptualisation from our designer and founder, Leanne, before a themed line of pieces are finalised.
2. The designs are then processed into 3D images or hand-crafted 3D wax carvings, depending on the intricacy of each design. To ensure the design matches the vision of our designer and brand we take 3 months to develop from a design to the finalised sample.
3. Once the physical designs are approved, the process of creating each piece with a limited number of stock takes around 8 weeks. The first step involves creating the master prototype which is casted from metal.
4. The master is then pressed into a rubber block to create a reusable mould of the pattern design. This rubber mould is then injected with wax to create a wax casting of the design. The same rubber mould will be reused and injected again and again in order to have the correct number of wax castings equivalent to how many pieces of gold and silver are needed.
5. Once each piece is checked by hand, a wax tree is created ready for casting. In order to achieve our intricate designs, we use lost-wax casting, a method that involves hand pouring molten silver or brass into an imprint that has been created from the wax that has then been heated and melted away.
6. Once the casting process is finished, the body of the piece is made and ready to go straight to polishing, or if required, ready for stone setting, adding resin or enamel and welding when necessary.
7. If the material is silver, it is ready to be polished, if it is brass it just needs to be plated with our thick gold plating and then polished. Once this is done, they are ready to be sent to the Netherlands, then off to your doorstep.
As with every other collection, each silver piece in Gitano is handcrafted using 100% recycled sterling silver, whilst our gold plated jewellery uses 60% recycled brass with a thick, 18 karat gold plating that is made to last.
So, rest assured. Each piece you now see on our website has been handmade in a factory that upholds safe working standards and prioritises conditions and consciousness within the production environment.
We hope you enjoyed seeing how many steps contribute to your adorned pieces as well as the talent and care gone into each piece of jewellery from our collections. Know that whether you’re wearing our Love Dagger necklace around your neck or stacking our Statement hoops, our Wild pieces carry a little bit of Bali in every detail.
With love,
Team Wild x
