The Craft Desk
Alloys, karatage, hand-raising, casting and the workshop economics of making objects that outlive their makers.
Roughly half of annual gold demand ends up as an object someone wears. The craft desk treats that as manufacturing journalism, not lifestyle copy.
We report from benches and casting rooms: what alloys do to colour and hardness, why annealing schedules matter, and how a workshop survives when its raw material costs more than its labour.
Physical Demand
Half the world's gold is worn, not stored. In India and China that distinction barely exists — and the buying behaviour it produces is the most reliably contrarian force in the entire market.
3 August 2026 · 16 min read
Standards
A hallmark is one of the oldest consumer protection technologies in continuous use. It is also, on close inspection, a small masterpiece of institutional design — and it is being quietly eroded.
22 July 2026 · 12 min read
Craft & Culture
Gold's working properties are so extreme they border on the absurd — one gram drawn into three kilometres of wire. Inside a trade where the tools have barely changed and the hands are irreplaceable.
5 June 2026 · 11 min read
Answers
Other desks
