About Us
PALLAS 1772
Named for a discovery. Forged from what survived it.
In 1772, the German naturalist Peter Simon Pallas catalogued an iron mass found in the hills outside Krasnoyarsk. The specimen turned out to be a meteorite class no one had described before — iron and nickel laced with translucent olivine crystals, formed in the molten core of a destroyed planet during the first hundred million years of the solar system.
That class is now called the pallasite. Every pallasite ever found bears his name.
Pallas 1772 is forged from the meteorites that carry his name, and from the iron meteorites that fell alongside them.
THE MATERIAL
Older than the planet you stand on.
The iron in a Pallas 1772 piece formed four and a half billion years before the Earth did. It crystallised in the cold of space at one degree per million years, leaving a structural lattice — the Widmanstätten pattern — that cannot be replicated in any foundry on this planet.
We work with two registered meteorites. Aletai, an iron meteorite recovered in 1898 from the Altay region of northern Xinjiang, China, where the impact carved the longest meteorite strewn field ever documented on Earth — 74 tonnes of cosmic iron scattered across the Chinese steppe. And Sericho pallasite, recovered in 2016 near the village of Habaswein in Kenya, with translucent olivine crystals embedded in an iron-nickel matrix.
Both meteorites are catalogued in the Meteoritical Bulletin. Both have known fall locations. Both predate civilisation.
THE WORK
Slow work, by hand.
Meteoritic iron is harder than terrestrial steel and three times as difficult to work. There is no machine that does it well, so we don't try.
Each piece passes through the hands of a single artisan from cut to polish. The meteorite is sliced and shaped, then etched in dilute nitric acid for the precise interval required to surface the crystalline lattice without softening the edges. It is set by hand, finished against a leather wheel, and inspected at every stage by the maker who started it.
We do not source from dealers who cannot name the meteorite by its registered classification. We do not produce in numbers that compromise the work of the bench.
PROVENANCE
Registered. Numbered. Verifiable.
Every piece is delivered with a hand-numbered certificate of authenticity, signed by the artisan responsible for it. The certificate records the meteorite's classification, its find location, its date of recovery, and the weight of meteoritic iron contained in your piece.
Counterfeit meteorite jewellery is widespread, and most buyers cannot tell the difference between a real Widmanstätten pattern and a stamped surrogate. A certificate that can be verified is the difference between a piece that holds value and a piece that does not.
The certificate is part of the object. Keep it with the piece.
FOR THE MEN WHO CARRY WHAT CAME BEFORE EVERYTHING
Pallas 1772 is for the man who chooses what he carries with care. Who would wear one piece for a decade rather than ten for a season. Who understands that the material a man keeps says more than the brand he wears.
Our pieces are produced in editions small enough to remember. Each one is older than the planet you stand on. No two are alike.