Gold is too ostentatious, and copper is too utilitarian, so is silver the most spiritually fashionable metal?

A lady friend of mine in the jewellery business told me that silver crosses and anhks and other common religious patterns always sell better than gold versions of the same design. She believes it’s because gold is not spiritually fashionable, and never has been (my wife thinks it’s because more clothing options happen to match with silver than gold). It could also be that silver is much cheaper than gold…  I would like to explore the idea of a spiritually fashionable metals.

Things have changed over the years, lets look back on the dawn of man and the fashion of wearing religious iconography.

The golden calf was made of gold - and is the very symbol of paganism. All through time the colour of gold is decribed using the uncommon adjective 'luster' .

Silver on the other hand is white, a metaphor for purity while gold is considered an agent of corruption.

The oldest Egyptian glyphs tell us that gold was considered to be the skin of the ancient Egyptian gods, and their bones were thought to be of silver. Although silver was found freely in nature, its occurrence was rare. Silver is the most chemically active of the noble metals, is harder than gold but softer than copper.

The ancient people knew of only seven metals. Historians believe humanity ‘discovered’ gold or at least revered its luster as early as 6000BC. Next was copper, and there is no mention of silver until around 4000BC.

It all started in Egypt. At the onset of recorded history, pure silver was unknown to the ancient Egyptians. They could obtain gold and electrum, which was a natural alloy of silver and gold from the mountains of the Eastern Desert and Nubia, but the Egyptian language at first lacks a word for silver. They described it as the "white metal", another variety of gold. Some Egyptologists believe that when silver was finally recognized in Egypt, it probably was more valuable than gold. 4th Dynasty queen Hetephere I bracelets of silver are thin while her gold jewellery is thicker. It continued to be rare, and on lists of valuables, items of silver were listed above those of gold during the Old Kingdom.

The 2010 Toronto Costume Jewellery Show in Toronto is an article that focuses on buying  vintage costume jewellery as an investment . The article highlights a ‘German silver’ waist chain that was worn by someone with some authority in the last century. Was it someone connected with the church? The word German silver means that it’s a nickel blend and has no real silver in the composition. But the chain has very expensive fasteners, and springs in the buckle

Real silver is often used in religious jewellery today and quite often these mementos become everyday objects of prayer. Running on Faith, in over 50 magazine Tempo Toronto describes how a religious woman goes jogging with her silver earrings on, and when she is affected by their action she puts them in her pocket – at the end of her run, one of the earrings is missing. Rather than get upset she prays and finds the missing silver jewellery the next day.