Made in Britain
Roberts & co is proud to be a British owned and based company hand crafting its products in London. “Made in Britain” has a global resonance that peaked back in the early 20th century, but with consumers increasing concerns about product quality combined with ethical and environmental provenance it really means something quite special again.
With mass production firmly overseas, British luxury manufacturers like us are still capturing the imagination of the modern global marketplace with small scale production and premium design using age old skills and preserving our long heritage of craftsmanship, engineering and endeavour.
We manufacture as much as possible in house, and each Roberts & Co piece is formed into final shape from raw materials and assembled from its component parts by hand using tools & techniques used by silversmiths and jewellers for centuries & are all hand finished in our London Workshop.
The aim when hand making any item is for them to be so impeccable that there is no evidence that the object was ever made and that it is as good if not better as any created by a machine.
However the true natural beauty of any handcrafted object is the fact that they were made by the hands of a human and not designed using a computer or mass produced by a machine. The slightest lingering of our files or polishing mops create the minutest tell-tale idiosyncrasies that only the human eye could ever possibly sense and no machine would recreate.
Roberts & Co pieces are fashioned using the human eye and formed or finished using tools held in the human hand. And the attention to detail and this individual crafting of each piece rather than mass manufacturing gives each one both a personality and character of its own.
Our brand is quintessentially British and we like to create products that have a British soul. The combination of timeless elegance, beautiful quality and ethical production using age old skills and craftsmanship is understandably desirable around the world.
However we are well aware that our customers are also looking for real value, so we are keen to prove that the real premium of buying British is quality and provenance over price. Small scale sustainable production allows us to use the internet to show customers behind the scenes and in doing so build a brand our customers can invest in because they can trust it will last.
Ethical Awareness
Questions are increasingly asked about the origin of all jewellery & gemstones. Traditionally all businesses and especially small ones like to keep their supply chain private primarily for commercial reasons. But this is changing rapidly with a new generation of both consumers and jewellers, both with a growing social and ethical conscious.
Sustainability, trust and reliability have always been our top priority. We manufacturer the majority of our own products in house using materials we source from suppliers who as an important part of the supply chain are aware of their social and ethical responsibility.
We aim to source our bullion only from suppliers who support the international efforts to prevent the financing of terrorist activities, military conflicts and human rights violations with the trade in precious metal.
For this reason we primarily use the same bullion supplier as the Royal Mint whose owner has now succeeded in being the very first European company to be audited and accordingly certified as a conflict-free gold refiner under the guidelines of the Conflict-Free Sourcing Initiative. Which means products are guaranteed to contain no conflict gold.
There are currently a number of other ethical alternatives developing with increased auditing and stricter standards which provide additional guarantees and certification. And as demand from our customers grows so will our product range to include other such alternatives as they continue to develop.
Many companies think spending small percentages of their profits on charity & philanthropy and then spending a small fortune on PR & marketing telling the world is enough to offset being complete assh*les, but we believe being a responsible business is fundamentally about how you earn your profits not how you spend them.
THE BRAND
Roberts & Co hand make and hand finish Gentleman’s jewellery and accessories from precious metals using traditional fine jewellery making & silversmithing tools & techniques in a rather Dickensian looking London workshop that would not have looked dissimilar a century ago, but very much for the modern gentleman.
Each piece being made of precious metal is then hallmarked at the Goldsmiths company assay office in the city of London in a tradition dating back to the fifteenth century when London craftsmen were first required to take their artefacts to Goldsmiths' Hall for assaying and marking.
The R&CO hallmark is unique and a form of very traditional branding, and Roberts & Co have also made a collection incorporating oversized feature marks to showcase them. Taking bespoke British craftsmanship of the past forward by presenting it in a form relevant to a very modern lifestyle, yet simultaneously celebrating it an elegant way.
The Roberts & Co. design philosophy was straightforward from the beginning; exclusively designing for gentleman allows the company to focus entirely on masculinity which is incredibly rare within the jewellery industry.
The Roberts & Co. manufacturing philosophy was also clear; provide its clients with the highest possible quality at the most competitive price as well as bringing back manufacturing of gentleman’s accoutrements to London. Proving there is a premium in quality not price for going British.
All the collections are designed with timeless style in mind and deliberately eschew ephemeral fashions and passing trends, by drawing together inspiration from antique & vintage pieces with Roberts & Co's own contemporary designs and developments they create stylish pieces for the modern day gentleman.
Mr Roberts ethos is that timeless style is key to the design of the pieces, for two important and parallel reasons -
"Firstly, our pieces are all made of precious metals, all are luxury goods and so need to look beautiful. They are utilitarian objects such as cufflinks, so their form does to some extent come from function. But most importantly they are built to last if cared for so they will need to remain timeless so they are wearable over future decades."
"Secondly and of equal importance are emotion, romance and sentiment. We make objects, but they become so much more. Our pieces are often gifts and may become heirlooms of the future so will have an immeasurable value to their owners – a sentimental value, derived from the personal memories associated with each piece and the emotion they evoke. So again they need to remain wearable and relevant over future decades not just the next season."
Roberts & Co mixes both the modern and traditional, its simultaneously vintage yet contemporary. The way they reach clients on-line is not traditional but their craft & craftsmanship is timeless. They are still a young company and proud to be a contemporary British brand.