News

Sterling Silver is a beautiful, practical metal used for jewelry. However, over time, air exposure, and contact with body oils, Sterling Silver will tarnish. The metal starts to turn black around the edges and appears dull. Some people think it is ruined and must be remade or recycled. Fortunately that is NOT the case. We offer all our cartouches in Sterling Silver and also a combination of Sterling Silver and Gold. We have some tips for keeping your necklace looking new and also how to clean it if you notice dullness or tarnish.   Care Tips for your Cartouche Do not wear it in...

The hieroglyphic language contains more than two thousand symbols, some representing words, others representing full ideas, and others representing sounds (phonetic). Depending on how the symbols is used, the same symbol might represent an idea in one hieroglyphic sentence, and a sound in a different sentence!    Since it is a phonetic language, the symbols represent sounds.  For example. the Basket symbol is a hard “C” sound, used to start the name Carla, or Cleopatra, but  it would not be the correct choice for the name Cindy, since the English letter ‘C’ now represents the soft C, or ‘S’ sound,...

Ramadan Mubarak means Blessed Ramadan.   Every night, for the 4 weeks of the Islamic month called Ramadan, Muslims around the world fast during the time between sunrise and sunset (not even drinking any water). It is a time to reflect on all the gifts of normal life, and also to think of those less fortunate.   They break their day-long fast at sundown with a meal called "Iftar". It is very common to have 20 people or more at the table. In Egypt, many local businesses set up tables open to anyone passing by. The Ramadan of 2020 is certainly a big...

The owner of Discoveries, Steve Collins, travels to Cairo several times each year to meet with the workshop to help them produce the best possible jewelry for our customers.   We order cartouches every week of the year, sending the specific hieroglyphic symbols for each pendant, and our staff in Cairo delivers the orders to the workshop to make sure that each cartouche is made correctly. After a week or so of hand-crafting the orders, our staff then checks the quality before sending them to our warehouse in Colorado, where we make a final check and carefully package    ...