Exceptionally Strong 2015 U.S. Silver Jewelry Sales Seventh Consecutive Year of Growth Silver jewelry sales in the United States were solid in 2015 with 60% of jewelry retailers reporting increased sales, according to a survey conducted on behalf of the Silver Institute’s Silver Promotion Service (SPS). This marked the seventh consecutive year of growth for silver jewelry sales and confirmed that silver jewelry is an increasingly important category for many retailers. Highlights from the 2015 survey include: • The average growth in 2015 for silver jewelry sales was 15%; • Retailers said their silver jewelry sales, as a percentage of their overall jewelry sales, were on average 35% of their unit volume and 27% of their dollar volume; • 45% of retailers said silver experienced the best turnover rate in 2015, followed by diamond jewelry at 22%, bridal at 17%, gold at 12% and platinum at 4%; continued on page 3 continued from page 2 Image of Silver Particle from 141-YearOld Photos Enlarged a Million Times, Turned Into Sculpture Contemporary British artist Simon Starling explores the journey of objects as they transform themselves through time, material and geography. In his 1997 work Blue Boat Black, for example, he took a wooden Victorian museum display case, used it to make a fishing boat, and then burnt it to produce charcoal to cook the fish he caught from the vessel.

From now through June 26, the Nottingham Contemporary museum is showing the largest exhibition in the U.K. of Starling’s works, including one that investigates the hidden properties of silver halide photography. For Nanjing Particles, the artist took two silver particles from Victorian-era photographs and enlarged their image a million times. From that likeness he formed a sculpture of the particles. In a 2015 interview in conjunction with the Imagine Reality art exhibit produced by several German museums, Starling discussed how he produced his silver sculpture: “I extracted some silver particles from the prints’ emulsion and viewed them under an electronic microscope. Each of the particles that constitute the image has three dimensional, sculptural characteristics. We identified two particles and made images of these particles from many different perspectives, so we were able to build a three dimensional model of them using software developed at Albany University. These models were then sent to an art foundry in Nanjing, China, who blew them up to one million times their original size and then forged them in stainless steel.” Smart Contact Lenses Rely on ‘Invisible’ Silver Wires May Lead to Wearables That Measure Glucose in Diabetics Chinese scientists have developed an ‘invisible’ electrical circuit inside a polymer used in producing contact lenses.

The circuit is invisible to the naked eye because it was formed by silver wires measuring just one micrometer wide — narrower than the diameter of a typical bacterial cell. The scientists produced the wires by injecting droplets of silver ink into the polymer known as dimethylsiloxane, which is used in contact lenses for its optical clarity and safety. One challenge to smart contact lens makers has been producing circuits small enough so they don’t distract the wearer or block their vision. Professor Song Yanlin and his team at the Institute of Chemistry at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing have helped to overcome these drawbacks by injecting silver ink into the lens polymer and producing a conductive mesh of tiny wires that measure only one micrometer in width. They said that the circuits remained operational even after the polymer had been bent many times. Aside from contact lenses, the silver-circuited polymer could be used in other wearable devices such as artificial skin that can measure temperature and perspiration and prosthetic limbs that can measure pressure placed on them. The scientists’ research paper titled Fabrication of Transparent Multilayer Circuits by Inkjet Printing was published in a recent issue of Advanced Materials.

URBAN JÜRGENSEN Click image to watch the Nottingham Contemporary‘s exhibit of works by Simon Starling GOOGLE Google is another company working to advance smart contact lens technology. This video shows a smart lens that measures glucose in a patient’s tears. • 87% of retailers say they are optimistic that the current silver surge will continue; and • The age group buying the most silver jewelry is 20-40, according to nearly 60% of the retailers. SPS Director Michael Barlerin commented, “The Silver Institute/Silver Promotion Service was obviously gratified by what the survey demonstrated. Silver’s outstanding performance was the result of multiple interrelated factors, including the fact that 57% of retailers reported they had increased their inventory on average of 21%.”

The survey was conducted by National Jeweler/Jewelers of America and was fielded in February/March of this year. This was the seventh consecutive year that SPS has conducted such a survey. A copy of the report can be downloaded here: 2015 Silver Jewelry Survey Results

Faze-Five is an international renowned manufacturer of 925 Sterling Silver and light weight 9k gold jewelry. Supplying to the wholesale and retail markets, established in Bangkok, Thailand