The films being made about our emerald isle would probably be more Blood Diamond than The Field if jewellery was big business here. But the jewellery industry in Ireland is more established than you might think.

The Company of Goldsmiths of Dublin was founded in 1637, when it was published by a royal charter of Charles I, and it has been in existence ever since. It is the last of the city guilds, and governs the Assay Office, which is at present situated in Dublin Castle.

The Assay Office is a test laboratory that certifies precious metal (to assay means to determine the content or quality of a metal or ore). If an item is deemed to be of the requisite quality, it is hallmarked. The Assay Office provides one of the first types of consumer protection we ever had in Ireland.

The Assay Office recently held a graduation for future jewellers. The Retail Jewellers of Ireland teamed up with the Company of Goldsmiths to present certificates to nine graduates who hailed from all over the country and who had successfully completed a staff training and education programme and passed the exam.

This cohort of students is the second set of students to receive this certification. The big winner at this year’s event was Patricia Kavanagh from Portlaoise, who won the Medal of Excellence for her exam results and overall performance.

How often have you bought a piece of jewellery from someone and felt you nearly knew more about precious metals and gemstones yourself than the person selling it? This course was established to help inform retail staff in jewellers about what they’re selling.

Assay master Ana Izquierdo runs Dublin’s Assay Office and she presented the graduates with their certs. “They all came to the Assay Office and we had a tour of the office, showed them around, explained what we do here, showed them the silverware that we have on display. Then we had a reception and a presentation of the certificates.

The programme imparted knowledge to students on different types of precious metals, different types of plating, hallmarking, how to care for pieces of jewellery and on how jewellery is made, for example. So now, when someone is buying a piece of jewellery they’ll be able to give them the right information.

Irish jewellery industry

Ireland isn’t a big manufacturer of jewellery compared to other European countries, such as Italy. Ireland has a craft jewellery sector, but we import a lot of our jewellery – from Hong Kong, Thailand and India outside of Europe, and then from Germany, Italy and Spain within Europe.

The role of the Assay office is to assay and hallmark items of precious metal manufactured in, or imported into, Ireland before they are offered for sale to the public.

“The wholesaler places the order and when it gets to customs it comes to us,” explains Ana. “The importer of the manufacturer will declare the carat or whether it’s sterling silver, for example, to us. Basically what we do is we test it to make sure that’s what it is,” explains Ana. “It’s a guarantee that what you’re buying is actually nine carat gold, for example.

“As you can imagine we don’t test every single item that comes to us, so we have a sampler, where we open a parcel and decide what items to take. We take a few items from the lot that would go for testing and, based on that, the whole parcel would be marked,” explains Ana.

It’s very rare the Assay Office gets a box of fakes. Ana says the issues are more likely to do with sub-standard items. “It doesn’t mean they’re completely fake, but they don’t have enough gold or silver to comply with the standard. If you have an 18-carat piece of jewellery, it has to be 75% gold.

“If it has 73% gold, we wouldn’t mark it. It actually has to be of the standard of fineness that is declared; it can’t be anything below that. We get a lot of substandard items that don’t actually reach the standard, so we cannot mark them as, say, 18 carat.”

There are 14 people working in the Assay Office in Dublin. This includes the financial controller, those in administration, those in the laboratory who test the precious metals, and those who do the actual hallmarking.

Despite being the assay master, Spanish-born Ana Izquierdo says she didn’t always have a passion for jewellery: she’s a chemist by trade. She ran the laboratory in the Assay Office for 15 years, and when the assay master retired last year, she took up the position. If there’s one message Ana is keen to stress it’s if you’re going to buy a piece of jewellery to ask your jeweller for the hallmark “because it is a lovely thing to have”.

“Ireland is well known for the Hibernia hallmark. Different countries have different marks. You have a lot of information in a little, tiny mark. So you know where it’s been marked, you know it has been tested and you know it’s genuine.

“By law, jewellers should have a display of hallmarking cards that explains all the marks,” explains Ana.

The next step one staff training and education programme takes place in March. For more information, email info@rji.ie. CL