Environmental and Social Policies

Do what’s right. It is by this simple concept that House of Dubhrós conducts all business. We believe that following this simple concept makes our creations all the more beautiful.

It is on this concept that we created many environmental and social policies that made mainstream jewelers cringe when we first opened in 2005. Since then we have been pleased to see some of our ideas, like responsible resourcing, have picked with other businesses. We are proud to say that still today, few if any have established the level ethical responsibility we have set for ourselves over two decades ago.

Because we make all of our jewelry and artifacts, we can guarantee that none of our pieces were made in sweatshops, or with slave labor. We have developed working relationship with other local artists, and will showcase their art and other products on our site. In doing so we make sure that their art and products are locally handmade and abide by our environmental and social policies. This practice also ensures that the artist or craftsperson is paid for their creations, and that money goes directly into their communities.

Ethical Sourcing

The House of Dubhrós will not buy from any company with a history of human rights violations, animal cruelty, or who engage in environmentally destructive practices such as strip mining. Whenever possible we prefer to buy our stones from private collectors and other small businesses, to lessen the impact on the environment and ensure that the money continues to circulate in local economies.

Silver and Precious Metals

All of the silver and precious metals we use to make our jewelry are from reclaimed precious metals. These precious metals are professional refined from scrap in the United States, and so are visually and chemically identical to the mine processed silver that is standard in the jewelry industry. Though this increases the cost of our materials, by using only metals reclaimed in the United States we can ensure that no one was exploited in the refinement process and no land was strip mined to create your new heirloom.

Antlers

All of the antlers we use are either natural sheds or the byproduct of sustenance food production. We have developed a way to resin impregnate the antler sheds to overcome the drawbacks of using sheds and make them more durable and beautiful.

Other Organic Materials

Any materials gathered from live animals (like teeth, claws and tusks etc.) that are used in our creations are bought from native dealers or other individuals who can guarantee that their inventory came from food animals or were a byproduct of ethically thinning out a population. However, most of the organic components we use come from recycled sources, such as materials salvaged from estate sales and the like.

Diamonds

We will not work with diamonds. The plain fact is that the demand for diamonds has funded civil wars and fueled bloodshed for decades now. Even if you actually manage to acquire a “clean diamond” from one of the companies who claim to offer such, you are still contributing to the demand. There are a lot more beautiful and, contrary to popular belief, durable stones out there. A diamond may be the hardest but it is brittle. Jade, however, is unmatched in its resilience, and it is one of the traditional stones of marriage and courtship.

Pearls

We will never use pearls in our designs. There are substitutes for pearls that are much more durable, and arguably more beautiful, that that do not cause the level of devastation seen in pearl farming and collecting. In addition to the environmental damage many of the individuals doing the work on legal farms are underpaid if at all, and poachers are common in the pearl industry.

Coral

Coral has many of the same problems as pearls, and coral poachers destroy entire ecosystems in their profiteering. We at House of Dubhrós believe that beautiful jewelry need not destroy the beauty in nature and so we will never use new coral in our designs.

In the rare instances we use coral in our creations it is upcycled from old jewelry and other items we find at estate sales and thrift shops. However most of the coral you will see in our jewelry is fossilized coral. There are several advantages to fossilized coral in addition to protecting the quickly vanishing coral reefs, which are currently home to over 2,000,000 different species, or 25% of all marine life.
1. Fossilized coral is harder than most types of coral. Coral tends to be a 3 on the mohs hardness scale. This means a single penny can cause a nasty scratch across your expensive coral, while fossilized coral can be a 5 or 6; almost as hard as quartz or twice as hard as modern coral.
2. Fossilized coral is much rarer than live coral. Without human interference the coral reef is capable of not only regenerating itself but actually growing larger in a matter of decades. Whereas fossilized coral takes a very unique set of factors to form and even then, several millennia must pass before new fossilized coral is formed. Less than 1 in 1000 species on earth will ever be represented in the fossil record, and there is even less of a chance that a specific living coral will be fossilized, by some estimates only 1 in 42,000,000.
3. A piece of history shrouded in folklore. Each piece of fossilized coral is a part of history; it is literally millions of years old. All folklore on live coral can be applied to its fossilized ancestors, but fossilized coral also has the advantage of having the properties and superstitions reserved for fossils applicable to it as well.