Nothing on this page has a price
Gold moves daily, so a printed figure is wrong by the afternoon. What is published instead is the making charge, as a percentage — which is the only number you can actually compare between two jewellers.
Three goldsmiths, and both of them are named on your ticket
Everything sold here is made here, upstairs, by people whose names go on the job ticket you keep. Nothing is bought in and re-tagged — a shop that mixes bought-in stock with its own bench work is a shop where you cannot tell which is which, and neither can the person selling it to you.
What a piece costs, structurally
Metal at the morning’s rate plus a making charge, and nothing else. There is no "wastage" line on our bill, which is where most of the trade’s margin actually sits.
How a commission runs
Five steps over four to seven weeks. You can stop at step two and the only thing you have paid for is a drawing.
A conversation, and a weight
What it is for, what you want it to weigh and what you already have that could go into it. Old gold is weighed and tested in front of you before any of it leaves the counter.
A drawing, priced
Hand-drawn, with the metal weight and the making charge on it. Charged at a small fixed fee that comes off the piece if you go ahead, and is yours to take elsewhere if you do not.
Wax or a first form
For anything with a setting. It is the step people skip and the one that stops a stone sitting a millimetre too high, which is a thing you cannot unsee afterwards.
Made, and hallmarked
At the bench upstairs, then to the assaying centre for hallmarking. We do not stamp our own purity — a jeweller who does is asking you to take their word for the one thing that is independently checkable.
Handed over, with the ticket
The job ticket names the maker, the weight, the rate on the day and the making charge. Keep it: it is what any other jeweller will value the piece from in twenty years.
From the bench
Commissions, photographed with permission and without a name. Nothing here is for sale — each was made for one person.
Asked across the counter
Four answers, and two of them are about numbers we will not publish.
What is your buy-back rate?
We will tell you on the day, and we will not print one. A buy-back percentage published today is a promise about a transaction that might happen in fifteen years, at a metal rate nobody knows, on a making charge already spent. Any jeweller advertising a fixed figure is advertising the part of it they can change.
Why is there no wastage charge?
Because modern bench work does not lose eight per cent of the gold, and the filings are collected and refined. Wastage was a real cost sixty years ago and is a line on a bill now. Ask anybody who charges it what happens to the swarf.
Can I bring my own gold?
Yes, and most commissions here do. It is weighed and tested at the counter with you watching, and the weight is on your ticket before it goes upstairs. If it tests below what you were told when you bought it, you will hear that too.
Do you hallmark yourselves?
No. It goes to the assaying centre and comes back stamped by them. A jeweller who stamps their own purity is asking you to trust the single fact that exists precisely so you do not have to.
Bring the old gold, and an idea
A drawing takes an afternoon and costs a small fixed fee that comes off the piece. If you take the drawing elsewhere, that is what you paid for.