Material Knowledge

We feel it’s important to work with materials that last for a long time and are friendly for our planet.

We choose to work with a collection of timeless classics combined with miscellaneous items in limited batches to keep waste to a minimum. Meaning sometimes these will only be available for a little while. The majority of the materials we use for production are made of recycled metals.

All our jewelry is either made from Gold Filled or Sterling Silver. Learn more about these sustainable materials and why we love to use them.

Gold Filled
Often we get the question if gold filled and gold plated is the same material. We can assure you, it’s not!
We will explain why Gold Filled is much better for the environment and makes sure you will enjoy your favorite piece of jewelry for a long time.

Gold filled is a thick layer of gold pressed to a core metal at a high temperature.
The layer of gold is more than a 100 times thicker than gold plated. This means gold filled jewelry will last a lot longer and makes sure you can enjoy your jewelry for a long time. Gold filled pieces legally need to feature 5% of gold.  The amount of gold on a plated item usually contains not more than 0,05%.

Sterling Silver
All silver jewelry at Atelier Neko is made from sterling silver. Sterling silver is an aloy, or combination of metal types. Unlike pure silver, which contains 99,9% elemental silver (Ag.), sterling silver (925) contains one or more additional metals that add strenght to the otherwise delicate material. Pure silver is naturelly very soft, and would easily bend or break if used for jewelry without being blended with a stronger metal.
Sterling silver always contains 92,5% silver and normally 7,5% copper.

All our jewelry is nickel free.