28 April 2026 · Craft notes · 3 min read
On the weight of small things
Why a 1.2mm change in chain gauge transforms how a piece feels.
Our first cable chain was 1.4mm. It looked right on paper and photographed beautifully. Worn, it disappeared — too light to register against the skin.
We re-cut the same design at 1.6mm. Two-tenths of a millimetre. The difference, on the body, was the difference between jewelry you forget and jewelry you reach for.
Weight is what separates a piece that performs from a piece that lives with you. It is also the hardest thing to photograph, which is why so much online jewelry feels thinner in the hand than it looked on screen.
Every Purl chain is now spec'd against a small library of reference weights kept on a tray by the bench. If a new sample doesn't hold its own against that tray, it goes back to the bench.
“Two-tenths of a millimetre is the difference between jewelry you forget and jewelry you reach for.”
Why grams matter more than millimetres
We talk about chain in millimetres because that's how it's manufactured, but the body reads weight in grams. A hollow 2mm rope can weigh less than a solid 1.4mm cable, and on the neck it shows.
Our spec sheets list both. A piece doesn't leave sampling until the gram weight is within five percent of the reference set on the bench.
The reference tray
The tray itself is unremarkable — a shallow brass dish that has been on the bench for four years. What sits in it is the studio's institutional memory: the first chain that ever felt right, the bracelet a customer returned because it felt flimsy, the prototype we killed for being too heavy.
New hires spend their first morning handling those pieces. Before you can spec a chain, you have to know what the right weight feels like in the palm.
The takeaway
- ●Specify chains by gram weight, not just gauge.
- ●Sample against a physical reference set, not a spreadsheet.
- ●Hollow construction trades presence for price — choose deliberately.
Written by
Jun Wei Lim
Head of Production
