What is precious metal clay?

Precious metal clay is a special type of crafting medium consisting of very small particles of silver mixed with an organic binder and water. It originated in Japan in 1990 and it can be shaped just like any soft clay, by hand or using molds. We often describe the texture as Play-doh so you can probably imagine the endless possibilities of what you can create with this material. It easily takes on texture from various objects and this is why we're able to make things like the coral imprinted jewellery.

The only downside to precious metal clay is that we only have one minute or so to work with it as the clay dries and cracks very quickly and easily. For this reason, we usually have all of the tools we need out on our work bench so we can access everything within our reach.

We generally let the clay sit for a few hours to a day for drying, then we go through the process of shaping, filing, sanding and finally engraving (for custom orders). The pieces are fired in a kiln in our home studio to burn off the binder and they become pure sintered metal which is 99.9% fine silver.

Want to know more about fine silver and how it’s different from sterling silver? Read the blog post here.

If you have any questions about precious metal clay or any other materials we use, please feel free to contact us!