Laos Silver Buttons, originally fitted with rings at the back and sewn onto a garment, here worked into earrings in Sydney with the rear rings removed and in their place fixed elegant handmade earhooks.
The above rondels date back some fifty years, to the 1960s/70s, and were intricately handcrafted in virtually pure Silver, each with eleven tiny “blooms” or “sunbursts” about a central neat pryramid of four concentric twist wire-work, a plain round granule at its apex.
The elegant Sydney-handmade earhooks crafted in Sterling Silver, 925, for creating them in the pure Silver (999) of the old buttons would have rendered them too malleable, too easily bent out of shape.
925, Sterling Silver, is the English Silver standard, Silver with Silver content of 92.5%, the alloys making up the 7.5% balance consisting mostly of copper. The standard was specified back in the 1200s by royal decree and was the mix hit upon by the experts of the day for a Silver of the highest purity possible while still being tough, yet workable.
The rest of Europe settled for Silver standards less pitched for perfection than the English, usually in the 80% to 85% purity range, and kept with these into the 1950s, moving to the 925 standard as American cultural influence grew (America had adopted the 925 standard from its colonial beginnings).