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Fordite Jewelry Before Its Made

You have heard of the old saying that one mans junk is another mans treasure.  Well sadly, Detroit knows this all too well.  Detroit continues to fall on bad times and people continue to abandon buildings and warehouses leaving acres and acres of eye sores.  The city has had a tough time reinventing itself and many people struggle to make a living in the city.  Last month I was watching a documentary on pickers in the city.  Guys were making a living by going from abandoned factory to abandoned factory dismantling the structures to sell the pieces for scrap metal.  I know you are wondering what this has to do with jewelry and bear with me a little longer.  These guys went all around Detroit looking for valuable remaining leftovers in these huge factories to sell off.  Some were unprotected and others were boarded up and trespassing was illegal.  They would come in the middle of the night and use blow torches to cut metal pieces off.

While many areas of the city are dilapidated and look terrible, there are often some really amazing things remaining in these properties.  Back in the day Detroit was the capital of the car industry and the birthplace of the automobile industry.  The cars were assembled by hand and many of the processes were painstaking.  Each car was spray painted by hand with enamel paint.  There were no fancy paint booths or controlled environments.  The paint merely fell to the floor and created piles and piles of layered paint.  The paint leftovers that accumulated hardened in the ovens when baked.   From the outside these old piles of baked "rough" look like a dirty rock.  Once sliced open and polished though, there are incredible layers of old paint that make these amazing patterns of color bands.

Here are some pieces of Fordite Jewelry before they have been cut down and polished.

These byproducts of old Detroit auto factories, are called Fordite which is also known as Detroit agate.  These amazing color combinations are being polished and crafted into various pieces of jewelry.  Fordite jewelry consists of earrings, pendants and various other pieces.  While we don't actually sell any Fordite jewelry here at Love & Pieces, a quick google search will show you some companies that do offer them.  We have assembled some cool photos of various different Fordite pieces to show you what they look like. 

Once the Fordite is cut up in the process to make the Fordite Jewelry the pieces are polished and come in varying shapes and sizes.

Once they are sorted and sized the appropriate piece of Fordite Jewelry can be crafted.  The individual pieces are inserted into various pieces to make items like you see below available from Fordite.com

We don't carry any of these Fordite jewelry pieces but you may be interested in some of our other fashion jewelry pieces here.