Our Story
We make what we sell
Everything on this site is made in our own workshop. Not designed by us and made by somebody else, not bought in and rebranded. The same building where a slab of agate arrives rough is the building it leaves from, finished, wrapped and addressed to you.
That matters more than it sounds. It means when you ask how thick a tray is, or whether a handle can be engraved, someone can walk out onto the floor and look.
The stone comes first
Agate, rose quartz, amethyst, clear quartz, aventurine, marble. Every piece starts as natural stone, which is a harder way to work than it sounds. Stone does not arrive in convenient shapes. It has to be cut, matched for color and grain, fitted piece by piece into a flat surface, then ground and polished level.
It also means we cannot promise you a piece identical to a photograph, and we would rather say so plainly. Two amethyst trays cut from different stone will not match. The banding runs where it runs. That is the point of the material.
Electroforming, not plating
The metal on our pieces is grown, not painted on.
In electroforming, real metal is deposited directly onto the piece over many hours and bonds to it permanently. A plated finish is a thin coat that sits on the surface and eventually wears through at the edges. An electroformed one has depth and weight, holds fine detail like the veins of a leaf, and does not flake off.
It is slower and it is harder to get right, and it is the thing we are best at. Gold, silver, rose gold, antique brass and antique copper, each mixed and finished in house.
The people who make it
We employ and train our own team, including people who arrived with no formal training and no obvious way into skilled work. Electroforming is not something you can hire for off the street, so we teach it. Some of the people finishing pieces today started with no experience at all and now do the most demanding work in the workshop.
That is not a charitable footnote to the business. It is how the business is staffed, and it is why the quality holds.
Getting it to you
Everything is made in our own workshop in Noida, India, and ships from there. We ship worldwide, free, with import duties already paid. VAT and any other local taxes are not included and may be charged on delivery, depending on your country. Returns from US customers are received in Pemberton, New Jersey. Email us at support@thetangerinestore.com and we will help.
Pieces are made to order rather than pulled off a shelf. Orders are dispatched within 5 to 7 business days. We think that is a fair trade for something cut and finished for you rather than stamped out by the thousand.
If something is wrong
Tell us. We answer every email, usually within a business day, and we would much rather replace a piece than argue about it. support@thetangerinestore.com