Seven undertakings a member makes about their own conduct. Written in the first person, because that is exactly what they are.
The association does not check these undertakings. It records them.
What gives them weight is that they are public, attached to a working business by name, and restated every year in a place where last year's version can still be read. A promise made quietly costs nothing. A promise made in a list with your name on it can be produced later, by anyone.
We establish what we can about the origin of the metals and stones we work with, and we say plainly where our knowledge runs out. We do not present an assumption as a fact. We do not describe a chain as clean on the grounds that nobody has yet shown us otherwise, and we do not pass on a supplier's assurance as though it were our own finding.
We do not knowingly buy from operations that use forced or child labour, that hold workers through debt, or that deny them the ability to organise. We pay our own bench and shop staff properly and on time. Where we cannot establish conditions in part of our chain, we say that we cannot, rather than implying we have looked.
We account for what our operation consumes, discharges and discards: energy, water, chemicals, packaging, and the waste from the bench. We measure what we are able to measure, and we publish the figures next to their limits rather than only the ones that flatter us.
We make no environmental or ethical claim we could not substantiate if a customer asked us to. We avoid words whose meaning we cannot define when pressed. We do not imply that an outside body has examined our work when none has, and we do not borrow the standing of an organisation we have merely paid to join.
We disclose what a piece is made of, what has been done to it, what it will cost to maintain, and what we will and will not do if it fails. We state treatments and origin the way we would want them stated to us. Where a stone is grown rather than mined, or a metal recycled rather than newly refined, we say so without being asked.
We keep repair, resizing, restringing and restoration available for what we sell, for as long as we are able. We support the training of the skills that make that possible, we do not design for disposal, and we would rather sell one piece that is inherited than three that are replaced.
Every year we publish, in our own words and under our own name, where we have got to on each of the commitments above. We report where we have not moved, and where we have gone backwards, alongside where we have improved. A commitment that is only ever reported as met is not being reported.
Signing the Code is the act of joining. It happens once, on the application form, so there is one record of who committed to what and on what date. There is deliberately no button on this page.
A member who no longer wishes to stand behind the Code may withdraw at any time, and the roster will record that they withdrew. We would rather keep an honest record than a flattering one.