Ethics & Sustainability
What we can stand behind at the bench, written in the same words we use with a customer.
The standard
Handmade sterling and gold pieces are formed in the studio. They may contain both metal recovered by hand from lawful ground and purchased metal melted with it. We do not claim a piece is entirely field-recovered unless that batch was kept separate.
Copper
Recycled copper wire is used on Morgan’s handmade work. That claim does not travel with drop-shipped or other catalog items.
Gold and silver
Gold and silver on studio pieces are melted and formed by hand. Some of that metal begins as rock or gravel worked by hand on ground a free miner may lawfully enter. Some is purchased grain, scrap, or wire melted in the same studio. When those sources share a crucible, the finished piece is mixed-origin. Only a melt kept apart from purchased stock may be called entirely field-recovered.
What a Free Miner Certificate is
Morgan holds a Free Miner Certificate in British Columbia. That certificate is the standing that lets a person seek mineral and placer rights and do limited exploration. It is not a mine permit, not a claim, and not proof that every piece in the shop came from the field.
Lawful ground
Field work follows British Columbia rules for the tools and the place: hand-scale recovery where that is allowed, respect for parks, protected areas, private land, existing titles, and Indigenous lands. Mechanized or permitted work is a different category and is not implied by the words on this page.
What this page does not cover
Drop-shipped goods are labeled in the shop and sit outside these studio claims. Stones, settings, and chain on those items follow their own makers. If a listing does not say it is handmade in this studio, do not read this page onto that listing.
Sustainability, as we mean it
- Recycled copper wire on handmade studio pieces.
- Small-batch work intended to last, not to chase a season.
- No claim of industrial-scale “green mining.” The work is small, local, and limited by what the law and the land allow.
- Honesty about mixed metal so a buyer is not asked to imagine a purity the melt did not have.
How to read a piece
Ask whether the batch was kept separate. If we cannot show that it was, the mixed-metal sentence above is the whole truth. That is the ethical position: fewer slogans, more sentences that survive a question.