Foundation Jewellery
We believe our fine ethical gold and platinum jewellery is the most ethically comprehensive ever offered in the world. We use recycled gold or platinum and Fairtrade & Fairmined Gold together with ethical CanadaMark diamonds. Let us tell you in more detail how we do it:
Materials
We use two types of precious metals in our jewellery.
Fairtrade & Fairmined Gold: We use Fairtrade and Fairmined certified gold certified against Fairtrade and Fairmined standards. This certification enables business, from designers and retailers to distributors, to offer their customers the guarantee of a product which has been responsible mined.
Recycled:
Our recycled gold and platinum ethical jewellery is guaranteed to be not less than 95% recycled gold or platinum. Regrettably our earring butterflies or pendant chain are not guaranteed as recycled but as soon as this is possible we will provide these.
Hallmarks & Stamps
As your guarantee all our products are hallmarked by an independent authority to check the quality and fineness of our metals. We use assay offices in Edinburgh & Birmingham. Our stamp is FJ.
The Fairtrade and Fairmined certified jewellery is then additionally stamped to prove its authencity. Only Fairtrade and Fairmined certified gold can carry the dual stamp.
Diamonds
Every one of our diamonds on our ethical jewellery subscribes to the Kimberley process. But we felt that was not enough. We wanted to go further and find a diamond supply that gave us peace of mind in terms of where the diamonds were mined. We also wanted to know who participated in the supply chain all the way through to us and that they are not exploited. As such we use only CanadaMark™ diamonds.
- Mined & polished in Canada so that our diamonds have a CanadaMark™ guarantee – not all Canadian mined diamonds have this.
- All come with independent reputable certificates such as GIA™ to confirm the size and qualities of those gemstones
- All diamonds have a microscopic invisible to the human eye laser engraving of their serial number on the edge.
Process
When working on our ethical gold or platinum jewellery in the Foundation Workshop we use
- A specially equipped workshop to make our jewellery away from normal jewellery & materials - it avoids contamination
- Environmentally friendly tools, chemicals and materials - even the chemical compound for cleaning is environmentally friendly
- Not contaminated with normal gold so you can be sure of the integrity of our products.
Product Range
We named each of our ethical jewellery jewellery ranges after a species of Hummingbird, the bird featured in our logo. Why did we choose a hummingbird? As most of the world's Fairtrade and Fairmined gold comes from South America and that's where hummingbirds mostly live, we thought the match was perfect!
Identifying us!
Every piece of our jewellery carried our sponsors mark: FJ. Our Foundation Flourish is our hummingbird. It can be seen in the shank of rings and sometime on the outside too. It's on the reverse of pendant settings. For our Fair Trade Gold a dual stamp is also applied to indicate the gold conforms to Fair Trade Standards. Our jewellery is grouped into ranges of styles. These are named after Hummingbird species in South America, the same as our logo.
Our Style
- Foundation is about beautiful gold and platinum ethical jewellery that's to be worn proudly and enjoyed, not kept in a safe
- Foundation has a subtle and refined identity: we don't need to shout about it but if you know what you're looking for you can tell a Foundation Design
- Each piece specifically designed for Foundation by our expert design team to meet Peter and Adam's exacting aesthetic and practical standards
- Each piece is hand finished to the highest standards and rigorously quality controlled
You can see the full range of our products via the shop here.
The Foundation Promise
All products come with a Foundation Promise. This is a unique document for each and every piece of jewellery we make. It contains the serial number for diamonds or other gemstones where available and a written guarantee of ethical provenance.
Read more here.
Our Accreditations
We take our responsibility very seriously and as such we are accredited with the UK's National Association of Goldsmiths, the global No Dirty Gold Campaign and the global Council for Responsible Jewellery.
