Craftsmanship & Sustainability
At Rachel Entwistle® each piece is carefully crafted with love using a combination of modern technology and traditional craftsmanship using recycled metals and working with ethical practices. We like to work with the individual and the artisan, we have an in-store workshop and have long standing relationships with each of our partners.
Sustainable Jewellery and Relationships
We see large scale, fast turnaround production as divorced from humanity. We believe in slower processes that connect us to the earth, to makers and to craftsmanship. We have a jewellery workshop at our Shoreditch store where our in-house jewellers work in a tight team – trading tips on house plants alongside the soldering and polishing. We have long term relationships with a select number of artisans in Hatton Garden, London’s jewellery quarter. Ranging from highly skilled stone setters to master engravers. Our makers in Jaipur have strong ethical policies which include safe working conditions, holiday and healthcare and regular working hours for employees along with above average pay. Of course, no child labour is involved in this production. We work closely with all of our jewellers and artisans, wherever they are.
Repairing Jewellery and Extending Life
We believe in cherishing things and passing them on, creating layers of meaning over time. We don’t believe in seasonal throwaway design but in creating jewellery that will last and be loved for years. So, we make well-crafted jewellery that lasts and use recycled metals across all of our collections – even the cut offs and metal dust from our workshop is recycled.
We offer in-house repairs to ensure our pieces last a lifetime, not a season. We can repair chain, reset stones, solder joins, and clean tarnished pieces. We also offer an affordable gold replating service that ensures our designs have a longer life.
We loathe disposable mass consumption without meaning or value. We buy less but buy well. Our runs are limited. We make to order, and pre-order to avoid wasteful practices.
Our in-house team refit or resize so that no gift is left unworn.
Our Solid Gold Upgrade Scheme
We offer a unique trade-in scheme for gold vermeil pieces for those that want to invest in an upgrade to solid gold.
You can return your RE gold vermeil pieces to receive a credit against your new solid gold piece.
Previously worn pieces will receive a credit of 50% of the value of the silver piece returned. Ensuring that you stay connected to your piece forever and that your unwanted piece goes on to a new life.
This jewellery is then given a repolish and refresh in our studio and re-released for availability at a discount under our REnew scheme.
This process ensures pieces do not get discarded and offers an affordable opportunity for our customers to invest in solid gold when the time is right.
One customer gets their new lifelong gold piece and another customer gets a Renewed piece.
Reducing Our Impacts
To minimise over production of stock, one of the jewellery industry’s most wasteful areas, we operate a MADE TO ORDER and PRE ORDER service.
This means we can either make by hand in London ensuring the livelihoods of our small team and partners in Hatton Garden or receive pre-orders on designs that are out of stock but made overseas. This means we use less resources in production and that we order only what we need from our partners in the UK and India. Small batch production and made to order ensure no material is wasted and that our partners can be paid a fair price for their work.
Studio and Store Practices
In 2019 we started working with an as close to 100% recycling company as we could find (bar bubble wrap - the demon amongst us and should be avoided due to its un-recyclable nature) for our waste disposal.
We have a water filter system to avoid disposable plastics.
We don’t print unless absolutely necessary.
We have reduced our postal packaging sizes and moved from un-recyclable jiffy bags to small boxes for delivery.
We continue to work to reduce our impact through our studio practices.
The True Meaning of Ethical Jewellery
For us ethical jewellery is not just about the way it’s made. It’s also about the way it’s portrayed – on social media and beyond. We want to disrupt the external focus, the objectification of jewellery, the airbrushed perfection, the superficial and pretentious. The way jewellery is so often portrayed as exclusive – a means to show off and create separation. We are interested in who you are, where you’re going and what role Rachel Entwistle Jewellery can play in helping you get there. Our jewellery is a means of self-expression – a way of communicating who you are, what’s important to you, and your relationship to the world around you. We are with you.
Read our Sustainability Report for further information.