Every chain, named by what it is made of

Two words do most of the work in jewellery, and they are not the same word. A solid sterling piece is silver all the way through. A plated piece is a thin layer of gold over something else, and what that something else is decides how the piece ages.

Among Jewlpire pieces the plating usually sits over sterling silver, and in the men's chains it sits over stainless steel. Both are printed on the product page, in the maker's own words, because the answer changes what you should expect after a year.

Necklace length is the number people get wrong most often, and it is the one that cannot be fixed after the parcel arrives. The table counts what the Jewlpire collection actually holds, length by length.

On most adults a 16 inch chain closes at the base of the neck, 18 sits on the collarbone, 20 falls just below it, and 22 and up sit on the sternum where a pendant hangs clear of a collar. Necks differ more than the numbers suggest, so measure with a piece of string before you choose.

Jewlpire started in 2010 as a small boutique in New York City, and the bench habits from that room are still the ones we work by. Traditional chain-making, modern proportions, and no interest in the words that jewellery hides behind.

The people behind Jewlpire spend most of their time on two questions that sound dull and decide everything: what is this made of, and how wide is it. A chain is a simple object. Almost every disappointment with one comes from a number nobody printed.

So we print them. Width in millimetres, because 1.1mm and 2mm are different objects at a glance. Length in inches, because that is the measurement your neck cares about. The metal, and where a plating sits, because gold over sterling silver and gold over steel age differently and cost differently.

The Jewlpire edit is deliberately narrow in kind and wide in size. We make chains, hoops, huggies and the pendants that hang on them. We do not make rings beyond a handful, we do not make bracelets, and we would rather have five widths of one good link than one width of five.

Plating is the part of this trade that gets oversold, so here is our version of it. A plated piece is gold on the surface and something else underneath. Worn daily against skin, cuffs and perfume, that surface wears. How long it lasts depends on the thickness nobody publishes, including us, and on how you treat it. The care guide says what actually helps.

Prices sit where the metal puts them. A fine plated cable chain is a small purchase. A solid sterling rope in a heavier width is not, and the difference between them is grams of silver rather than a name. The cheapest piece in the collection is $4.99 and the dearest is $26.99.

The catalogue grows one width at a time. A link earns a place when it survives the plain test: wear it for a month, take it off in the dark, catch it on a scarf, and see whether the clasp still closes cleanly. Most of what fails, fails at the clasp or at the jump ring beside it, so the clasp type goes on the page and not into the small print.

Photographs on this site are of the piece itself against a plain ground, at the size the file allows. A chain is a difficult thing to photograph honestly: it is mostly air, and every studio trick that makes it look substantial also makes it look like a different chain. We would rather the picture be dull and the numbers be right.

We are a small operation and the range shows it. There are gaps: no bracelets, almost no rings, no stones beyond cubic zirconia in a few earrings. What we do have is a chain wall that goes from a 0.8 millimetre box you can barely feel to a 6 millimetre Cuban you cannot ignore, in lengths that actually exist rather than lengths a dropdown promises.

What we will not do is describe a piece in words the metal does not support. If a chain is plated we call it plated. If the base is steel we say steel. The federal rules on this are public, we read them, and the guide quotes them rather than paraphrasing.