Since ancient times, argentum (silver) has been mined and put to many uses - including jewelry. Like gold, silver is too soft in its pure form to be used for making durable jewelry. To overcome this problem, metal smiths learned that adding small amounts of other metals greatly increases its strength without significantly affecting its color or shine. The resulting metal combination is known as an alloy. Sterling Silver is a silver alloy that is a mixture of 92.5% pure silver and 7.5% copper. This exact ratio was used prior to the 12th century in a region in Germany known then as Easterling. It came to be known as Sterling Silver after King Henry II introduced German refiners as workers in England. Much Sterling silver manufactured today is marked .925 to identify it as Sterling Silver.

Refiners have in recent years been experimenting with alternate silver alloys in an effort to find a combination that is less prone to oxidation than Sterling Silver. The most successful of these experiments have used platinum, zinc, tin or germanium. Many manufacturers still prefer to use the original silver and copper mixture because it is often intentionally blackened (oxidized) and then polished to bring out the detail in incised, embossed and etched pieces.