The silversmith's line: sterling necklaces, rings, bracelets and wearable sculpture, from studio hands to the great design houses.
Three silver stories
Silver is the metal on this shelf, but each house on it tells a different story about it. The oldest design here is the Hermès Chaîne d'Ancre. Dealer accounts credit Robert Dumas-Hermès with the first bracelet in 1938, drawn from the iron anchor chains of fishing and cargo vessels on the Normandy coast, with a bar across each oval link to keep it from collapsing under side load. A cable that held ships became a bracelet that holds a wrist.
The softest line belongs to Elsa Peretti. Her Open Heart for Tiffany & Co. dates from 1974, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston records that it was one of her first designs for the house. She took her inspiration from a photograph of a Henry Moore sculpture, in which a void became the hollow of the heart, and she worked out the form with the fabricators in the Tiffany workroom.
The most defiant is Chrome Hearts, founded in 1988 by Richard Stark, Leonard Kamhout and John Bowman in a Los Angeles garage, and built from sterling silver, leather and ebony. Its Tokyo boutique opened in Minami-Aoyama in 1999, the second shop the house opened after New York. A tiny cross or a dagger on a chain is a piece of that history, worn close to the skin.
What the stamp says
Sterling silver is an alloy, and the stamp 925 states its proportion: 92.5 per cent silver, with the balance in base metals, chiefly copper. That copper is what reacts with sulphur gases in the air. When you read a piece, look for the stamp before anything else. The Canadian Conservation Institute begins its own advice on cleaning silver with the same instruction, to check for hallmarks to tell solid sterling from silver-plated objects.
Weight is the second check. Several pieces here are described in grams for a reason: a bracelet of heavy links tells you more through the hand than through any photograph.
Tarnish is not damage
The dark film that gathers on silver is black silver sulphide, formed when sulphur-bearing gases in the air, hydrogen sulphide among them, react with the metal. The Canadian Conservation Institute is clear that tarnish need not be removed before storage, and that removal should be minimal, because each polishing takes away a little silver. For a piece that is worn it is simply a matter of taste, and a soft grey on the inside of a link is evidence of a life lived rather than a flaw.
If a piece does need cleaning, the conservators' advice is to wash it in mild detergent and distilled water, rinse and dry it with a soft cloth, and to avoid general-purpose metal polishes, because many contain ammonia, which dissolves copper. For storage they recommend wrapping each piece in unbuffered, acid-free tissue and sealing it in a polyethylene bag, with silica gel and activated charcoal alongside to limit humidity and tarnishing gases. Cloths impregnated with silver particles are reported to be the most effective of the tarnish-inhibiting options.
Our own care guide, linked below, adds one caution that matters for designer silver: many pieces have deliberately blackened recesses that give depth to the design, and dips and pastes will strip that finish. Every piece on this shelf is examined and documented in Tokyo, Japan before dispatch, and the grade notes the stamp, the weight and the state of the surface.
Looking for a particular link, size or weight?
Our Otoriyose private request desk can look within Japan for a specific silver piece and reply with what is available.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What does 925 mean on silver jewellery?
It marks sterling silver, an alloy that is 92.5 per cent silver with the balance in base metals, chiefly copper.
When was the Hermès Chaîne d'Ancre first made?
Dealer accounts date the first bracelet to 1938, designed by Robert Dumas-Hermès and inspired by the anchor chains of vessels on the Normandy coast.
When was the Elsa Peretti Open Heart created?
The design was first created in 1974. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston describes it as one of her first designs at Tiffany and one of her best known.
Why does silver tarnish, and should I remove it?
Tarnish is mainly black silver sulphide, formed when sulphur gases in the air react with the metal. The Canadian Conservation Institute advises that it need not be removed before storage and that removal should be minimal, since each polishing removes a little silver.
How should I store a silver bracelet?
The Canadian Conservation Institute recommends wrapping it in unbuffered, acid-free tissue and sealing it in a polyethylene bag, with silica gel and activated charcoal to limit humidity and tarnishing gases.
Sources and last review
Last reviewed 28 October 2026. Curated in Tokyo, Japan by The Japonista Curation and Concierge Team.
