INFORMATION AND ADVICE
Each ANDREA925 jewel was born to be worn every day and on all occasions.
We believe that silver is made to be worn: the more you carry a jewel, the more you wear it and wash it together with personal cleaning, the more it will remain vivid.
Natural untreated silver jewels, like all ANDREA925 jewels, worn even daily with care , will require only rare extraordinary maintenance, especially if it is carefully cleaned from time to time and stored appropriately. Since it is a precious object, it is recommended to pay only a few simple attentions.
Obviously due to use and time both silver and gold jewels can lose their lustre. The natural phenomenon of dulling, due to oxidation, is common to all precious alloy products and can be easily eliminated by cleaning with a special cloth sold in our store and on our website ( https://www.andrea925.com/en/product/jewelry-polishing-cloth/ ) or by professional cleaning if the stage of oxidation is advanced.
For the best care of your jewelry, it would be a good idea to make it the last thing you wear in the morning and the first that you take off in the evening.
For proper maintenance we recommend washing your jewelry every day, especially in summer time, with liquid soap and water and using a professional cloth.
To restore surface finishes such as rhodium-plating or burnishing, a professional intervention by our specialized goldsmiths is always necessary.
Silver tends to oxydate and therefore darken if it remains exposed for a long time, without ever being used, to air, to sulphur, to moisture or when in contact with sweat, with products such as some types of cosmetics, household bleach and other harsh chemicals.
No need to worry though: it is an absolutely normal phenomenon. The phenomenon whereby silver lustre is dulled and the surface becomes darker and more opaque, scientifically known as “tarnishing” and commonly referred to as oxidation, is well known in metallurgy.
The degree and speed of this phenomenon cannot be predicted because it depends on several factors, most of which are related to strictly personal features ( care and use of jewelry, skin transpiration, ph, use of products, proximity to spas, etc..)
To avoid oxidation as far as possible, as it is a natural phenomenon affecting all metals, it is recommended not to wear jewelry during activities such as;
- bathing in hot springs
- during prolonged exposure to the sun (increased sweating)
- while using oils, lotions, hair and chemical products, fragrances and other cosmetics
- at the gym or during sports (increased sweating)
- at the gym or during physical activity with weights that could bend and/or break the jewelry
It may happen that white gold jewels turn yellow in time. This is a well-known and entirely natural phenomenon typical of white gold alloys which naturally have a yellowish color. White gold jewels are usually rhodium plated: a coating used on metal surfaces which consists in applying a thin layer of a salt of rhodium, adopted for protection or aesthetic reasons to give brilliance and a white color.
When the light yellow colour of natural white gold emerges, it means that the rhodium plating has been worn away due to normal and constant use should therefore be restored.
In any case, rhodium-plating is also an easily restorable surface treatment that we recommend you carry out on a regular basis to keep your jewel looking good as new.
How to clean silver and gold
You can polish silver and gold with our polishing cloth, soaked in antioxidant, suitable for all types of precious metals.
Our ANDREA925 cloth must never be washed, in order to not remove the antioxidant inside it, and can last several years.
You can do this carefully even every day and it will remove oxidation and restore the brightness in your jewel.
The polishing cloth does not remove scratches. It is therefore important to protect jewels from bumps, contact with abrasive surfaces and heat surfaces, in addition to the activities listed under WHY DOES SILVER DARKEN/TURNISH. We recommend to always remove rings before a workout, before carrying weights or doing any activity that can damage and bend them.
Remember that silver is a soft metal and can be easily scratched if poorly cared for and used.
However it can be just as easily be polished to remove scratches. We therefore recommend that you bring it to our workshop where our professional goldsmiths can carry out this repair.
For any other problem, we invite you to bring your ANDREA925 jewelry in our store for a cleaning, inspection and a professional workmanship.
MORE ABOUT METALS
ANDREA925 jewels are mainly made of 925 silver skillfully crafted using traditional jewelry techniques.
Technically speaking, 925 is the title for silver metal. The title indicates the pure quantity of metal in thousandths, so in the case of silver it means that out of 1000 parts of precious metal there are 925 parts of pure silver while the remaining parts are the alloys required for the melting and malleability of the product.
Our gold products, instead, are all made from 750 gold, which indicates the pure gold portion of the entire alloy. 750 gold, also known as 18 carat gold, can be white, yellow or rose, and indicates that 750 per thousand (or 75%) it made up of pure gold while the remaining 250 per thousand (or 25%) of other metals.
All ANDREA925 jewels are handmade in wax and cast with silver or fine gold grains.
They are all designed by our unique designer Andrea, created and made by him.
The latest addition to the ANDREA925 collection is brass, a not noble metal, but with a characteristic color similar to gold. Brass is an alloy consisting essentially of copper and zinc.
SILVER:
Silver is known for its soft and white surface and it has become the metal chosen by ANDREA925 since its founding in 1995 to the present day. The largest part of our collections are made of untreated 925 silver, therefore free from galvanic baths and rhodium plating, burnished to bring out the details in some designs and the workmanship.
We prefer silver with its natural color because it can be polished often, it can be used by customers without any particular care except those indicated, without undergoing changes of color and it can also be worked in our laboratory by our goldsmiths without problems.
The softness of silver makes it easy to work but also easily subject to wear, that is why our laboratory is always active in ensuring the restoration of the initial state of the jewel which can take case without any problems in case of normal wear due to use.
Finally, one of silver’s natural characteristics is its porosity, which makes it an absorbent material: air, excessive skin perspiration, lotions and beauty products as well as chemical products with which it tends to oxidize. Oxidation is an absolutely natural process for silver, sometimes it can also happen very quickly ( in a few hours) and its very subjective being related to situations such as those listed above that are always different and occasional.
Remedies are easy and well explained in the DAILY CARE section.
GOLD:
With its natural shine and brightness, its unique density, its extreme ductility and its resistance to oxidation, to chemical reagents, to acids and heat, gold is the noble metal par excellence and the perfect material to use for any kind of design.
In his Gold Collection, Andrea925 offers it in white, yellow and rose, this last one being the one preferred in making many of the items of the collection and the wedding rings.
The characteristic hardness, makes it the most durable and wear-resistant metal.
BRASS:
Not a noble metal but widely used in jewelry, brass is essentially composed of copper and zinc.
Its main characteristics are hardness, malleability and good corrosion resistance.
It is subject to oxidation as much as, if not more than, silver in contact with air, humidity, skin transpiration, chemicals, perfumes and make up and creates a patina of green-colored oxide that can also be released on the skin. This should not, however, cause panic as it is a natural behavior of this metal and does not create any damage to the skin.
The brass of our jewelry is always gilded in fine gold to maintain a good shine and a homogeneous golden color and coated with a galvanic bath for protective purposes.
For the care and maintenance of our brass jewelry, we recommend that you avoid wetting them with water and soaps, to use them at sea and beach or in the pool.
Besides this difference, the remaining attentions remain the same as for silver care.
GEMSTONES:
Gemstones mounted on a piece of jewelry have their own inherent delicacy, so even unintentional impacts could damage or break them.
Our gemstones can be glassy or porous:
GLASSY: this group includes all those synthetic semi-precious gemstones (cubic zirconias) and very precious gemstones (diamonds and colored gems such as sapphires, topazes, rubies …) used for some of the items of the collection.
Each natural gemstone has its own characteristics of purity, color and size and no one can be the same as another and retouched.
Incorrect use and particular stresses may cause the stones to chip or leave their place.
Our goldsmith’s workshop is always available for repairs and maintenance on all our creations.
POROUS: this group includes all the natural stones used for certain designs in our basic collections. Stones such as malachite, onyx, lapis lazuli, etc. are cut specifically for our collections, custom-made for the jewelry with bezels collection and fixed with a two-component epoxy resin.
As these are two completely different materials (silver and natural stone) held together by an adhesive, the seal may not be eternal, as incorrect use and particular stresses may cause the stones to fall off.
Our goldsmith’s workshop is always available for any repairs and maintenance on all our creations.
Natural porous stones are all different and you will rarely find two of them with the same striations, veining and characteristics.
Some of our natural stones, such as Sampietrino(Cobblestone), have their individual characteristics related to the material properties of the original stone. These characteristics are what makes us choose to use them in our jewels and what makes them unique and impossible to change.
All our ANDREA925 jewelry is made of high quality materials, such as 925 silver and 750, 18k gold.
Our gold and silver alloys do not contain nickel; for this reason, customers customers cannot have allergic reactions to our jewelry. to our jewelry.
All of our jewelry is certified and guaranteed by ANDREA925 itself, the only responsible for its production with his trademark *232RM from 1972, which indicates the origin and therefore leads back to ANDREA925 himself, the only producer and creator of the brand’s jewelry.
Inside each ANDREA925 jewel you will always find three stamp marks that identify and bind them to our company: the 925 stamp on the silver or 750 stamp on the gold, the ANDREA925 logo and the *232RM mark that indicates the 232nd factory in Rome for the production and manufacture of jewelry.
We are pleased to offer cleaning and repair of all ANDREA925 jewelry over time and years.
Our services are reserved exclusively for our products and include:
- Changing the size of rings
- Professional cleaning and polishing of jewelry
- Repair of damaged jewelry
- Setting and fastening of glassy or porous stones
- Jewelry restoring
- Customization and engraving
- Rhodium plating and galvanic baths
And everything your ANDREA925 jewel may need to return to its most valuable state.
You can visit our store located in via Sforza Pallavicini 3 and ask for assistance for your jewel.
If you have any doubts or problems, please contact the ANDREA925 sales point where you made your purchase, via Sforza Pallavicini 3, Rome.
We are also always available on all our other communications channels: email, IG and FB.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at shop@andrea925.com, we usually reply within 2-3 working days.