Real Pewter!

The metal used in the manufacture of all Alchemy’s pewter products is the highest grade “English Pewter”. Some manufacturers misleadingly use the term ‘pewter’ to describe alloys containing lead. This results in inferior, more easily made products that are heavier, softer and of a darker color and are much more prone to tarnishing and disfigurement.

English Pewter is the finest grade of pewter, (to BS EN 611-1:1995 standard). Traditionally, pewter was a mixture of lead and tin, but today, English Pewter is a rich, high-grade alloy of 92% tin with copper, (plus a few legitimate trace elements), and is regarded as a ‘semi-precious’ metal valued second only to silver. For jewelry and accessories this is the safest tin-based alloy in use and is fully lead, cadmium & nickel compliant to California Proposition 65 for total lead & cadmium content, Commission Regulation (EU) 494/2011(REACH) for lead & cadmium and European standard BS EN 1811:2011 for nickel. English Pewter is very much harder to craft than zinc alloys and the old and primitive forms of pewter, which contain significant amounts of toxic impurities that ease production, however, please beware as these poor alloys are still used by many manufacturers around the world today.

Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive

Some of our products, such as watches, include electronic components and single-use batteries. Care should be taken to dispose of these in an environmentally friendly way when they reach the end of their useful life.