Ashley Heather reclaims precious metal from circuit boards to create jewellery in Dezeen magazine.

Ashley Heather reclaims precious metal from circuit boards to create jewellery, published in Dezeen magazine.

http://www.dezeen.com/2015/03/11/ashley-heather-reclaimed-circuit-board-metal-jewellery-design-indaba-2015/

In this article, Dezeen features Ashley Heather’s jewellery designs which she presented at the Design Indaba 2015 Expo. The official website describes the expo as “South Africa’s premier showcase of high-end design, exhibiting the homegrown wares of all the creative sectors under one roof.”

By working closely with a metal refinery “which she claims is the only facility of its kind in Africa”, Heather is able to use the silver which is recycled from discarded circuit boards and other electronics which use quite a good amount of silver since it is a good conductor for electricity, although not mentioned in this article, gold is another precious metal frequently found in electronics.

According to the designer, the silver that is extracted from this refining method is actually purer than 999 silver traditionally used in jewellery, because the method used reduces the amount of impurities to practically nothing. One can tell this even by looking at the photos of the jewellery.

This silver can also be used as sterling silver by adding a percentage of copper to it which is also recycled from the electronics.

It’s interesting that in a world where everyone is trying to steer away from using traditional materials because they are not as ‘environmentally friendly’ as the more contemporary materials being used in creations today, designers are finding new ways of using the same traditional and precious materials and still using the ‘green’ hook that seems to be a necessity for anyone selling anything in the current climate.

References

Dezeen Magazine, 2015. Ashley Heather reclaims precious metal from circuit boards to create jewellery. [Online]
Available at: http://www.dezeen.com/2015/03/11/ashley-heather-reclaimed-circuit-board-metal-jewellery-design-indaba-2015/
[Accessed 02 May 2015].