5 Reasons to Choose Brass Jewellery

February 3, 2026

So you’ve come across brass jewellery and are wondering why on earth you would choose that? You hear it turns skin green, so it must be a cheap, rubbish material? Your mum swears it gives you allergies?

Brass jewellery tends to sit quietly in the background of the jewellery world - often misunderstood, sometimes underestimated and yet deeply loved by those who wear it regularly. Warm, golden and honest in its character, brass is a material that defies the misconceptions with the advantages it brings.

If you’ve ever been drawn to gold-coloured jewellery but hesitated because of price (hello 2026 price madness!) or sustainability concerns, brass might already be speaking your language. Here are five reasons why choosing brass jewellery is not a compromise, but a conscious, considered choice, and they might help you shrug those prejudices off:

1. It has the warmth of gold without the price tag

Brass carries that rich, sun-warmed golden hew we associate with gold but without the barrier of cost. In 2025/2026, stock prices of gold (and silver) have shot up due to, well, the world being on fire, let’s face it. When the world-order is wobbly, investors tend to pick more solid items to put their money towards, and gold is an all-time favourite. However, investors buying up stock means higher prices. This trickles all the way down to where I as a maker get my raw material from. It also likely means that there’s higher pressure on gold-mining, at the best of times a questionable world.

Brass, by contrast, tracks industrial metal markets rather than investor markets and is much less expensive at source. Brass is an alloy of zinc and copper. It often is recycled from old industrial materials (like plumbing fixtures or discarded metal), dramatically reducing the need for new mining and therefore costs. Recycling brass also consumes far less energy than mining and refining gold and can form part of a closed-loop system where materials stay in use longer.

When I use brass in my jewellery, the much more affordable raw material price means there is room for experimentation. I don’t need to plan each design in detail, concerned about wasting material. Cut offs are still recycled in-house though, in my ZERO line that melts down any scrap into new pieces. So by choosing brass, you choose affordability, you choose creativity and you choose something with a lot less ethical implications.

BUTTERCUP Large Blossom half hoops

£29.00

2. Brass ages beautifully

Unlike materials that are designed to stay exactly the same forever, brass is alive in its own way. Over time, it develops a soft patina that reflects how it has been worn and lived in. Each mark, each change in tone, becomes part of the piece’s story - and yours.

I usually call it the ‘antique-y’ look when brass turns a soft brown. Some people love this! Others might see it as an imperfection, and beneath what gold does. Well, any metal tarnishes, some just more quickly than others. But the piece of jewellery you have in front of you is not just raw metal, it’s a little treasure, and even ye old pirate legends always looked after their treasures! With brass, it is not only quick but also easy: A tub of Brasso and a cotton cloth, as well as 30 seconds of your time, and you’re good to go.

This is also a good moment to mention ‘non-tarnishing’ jewellery as it is so popular at the moment. Is byMaraca jewellery tarnish-free and water-resistant? No, and there's very good reasons.

Any solid metal will tarnish, whether that's brass, silver or gold. The only way to achieve tarnish-free and water-resistant pieces is to coat and/or plate them, and most tarnish-free and water-resistant jewellery is neither once the base metal underneath is uncovered.

I choose to work with solid metals as it is much quicker and more sustainable to polish a piece back to shine than have plating flake off and ruin the piece of jewellery potentially forever, sometimes even leaving sharp edges. While the promise of tarnish-free and water-resistant jewellery seems great in the moment, once the effect wears off, your jewellery might not be fit for purpose. Solid materials and a quick polish are the only long-lasting solution.

Tarnished jewellery is very easy to bring back to a shiny life, and I have a page dedicated to care instructions to help you look after your jewellery.

3. It’s an honest material choice

Brass is long-lasting and recyclable. Choosing it supports slower production methods and thoughtful design - a quiet counterpoint to fast fashion and throwaway accessories. I personally love working with brass a lot more than silver or gold. Of course, the latter is exciting, but it puts quite a bit of pressure on you if you work with £300 worth of material! Brass feels more down-to-earth and generous, not only because it has a much higher melting point than silver and gold, which gives you just that extra bit of time as a metalsmith, but also because it invites a different relationship with making altogether.

Brass allows for curiosity, for play, for getting things wrong and learning from it, without the constant tension of knowing that every slip of the hand has a very real financial consequence. That generosity seeps into the design process: I can explore forms more freely, let pieces evolve rather than forcing them into perfection, and stay present with the material instead of rushing through it. You listen more, adjust more and respond to what’s happening in front of you. In that sense, brass feels deeply aligned with the way I want to make jewellery: thoughtfully, intentionally, and with room for humanity. Each piece becomes less about flawless execution and more about character — about something that has been shaped, not just produced.

And speaking of honesty, I also strongly believe that, as someone who has Aphantasia (the inability to form a full-functioning mental image), being able to play is the only way to be creative. My brain just can’t create a design on paper first. It can do a drawing, but not the detail that will appear while actually handling the metal. But more on this another time!

4. It suits intentional styling

Brass doesn’t try to be delicate for the sake of it. It holds its shape, has weight, and feels grounding on the body. That makes it perfect for jewellery that is meant to be noticed. Not in a flashy way, but confident. Pieces that feel like part of your armour rather than an afterthought.

It will age, change and carry marks of time, just like we do. It needs a bit of TLC, just like we do. But this can also form a ritual, a connection with a piece.

Just see what feelings these scenarios invoke:

A £25 ring that you got in H&M because it was on a rack by the till, and you were waiting to pay in the queue. You like the design, it shimmers beautifully in the neon light and you’re like, oh go on, I deserve a treat. It’s your turn to pack it up and it goes in the bag, hooray! After two weeks of wearing it, the ring suddenly changes colour - the plating wearing off, revealing copper underneath. Your golden ring is now dull rose with speckles of gold remaining - and no one to ask what to do...
A £25 ring that you see at a market stall on a holiday with friends to a little English town. You point it out to the others and they say ‘Oh my goodness, that’s so YOU!’. You try it on, chat to the vendor who explains how it was made and how to look after it. You decide to go for it, the vendor is delighted and says thank you with the biggest smile and gives you a business card with care instructions (the ring might dull a little with lots of wear but that's normal, don't worry, here's a polishing pad!) and their instagram account, where they later post that today’s market was so lovely and thanks everyone for helping them pay their mortgage with their passion.

Need I say more? You spent £25 in both scenarios. I don’t need to ask which one the human mind will lean to for connecting meaning. That shared journey, between material, maker and wearer, is what makes brass feel not only practical, but quietly powerful. You didn’t spend any more but received plenty more than just a ring.

5. It has a long cultural history

Because brass jewellery is wearable, resilient, and accessible, it naturally becomes part of daily life. And it has been for a long time!

Brass has been used for centuries in everyday objects: instruments, tools, ritual items, domestic hardware - things designed to be handled, relied on and lived with. Wearing brass taps into that lineage of usefulness and presence, rather than ornament alone. It was a commonly used metal for jewellery worn by ancient Romans, and over time, as precious metals became just that, more and more precious, and reserved for royalty or ceremonial use, brass mattered in everyday life.

Across cultures and eras, brass also found important roles in ritual and spiritual practice. In parts of Africa, such as the historic Kingdom of Benin, large and intricately cast brass sculptures were created using techniques like lost-wax casting. These works held cultural importance. Even today in some traditions, brass amulets or ceremonial bells are used in daily rituals because of their symbolic significance.

Perhaps most importantly, brass has always been a material of use as much as beauty:

To this day, it is used for instruments such as trumpets and French horns
It was and is used for locks and doorknobs, exactly because it both looks good and holds up under use
It appears in scientific instruments, navigational tools and clocks, where precision and durability matter.
And long before industrial metals were invented, brass was a go-to material in daily life activities precisely because it didn’t demand special treatment just to remain useful or beautiful.

Because of this, wearing brass jewellery is not just about aesthetic. It connects you to a lineage of objects that were meant to be touched, used, lived with, and passed from hand to hand. It shares the spirit of those ancestral tools, instruments, and vessels: durable, welcoming and alive with the possibility of everyday meaning. I think that’s a beautiful way of seeing brass jewellery today: part of everyday life, the hustle and bustle, the quiet moments, with a legacy that it easily upholds.