Last summer, metalsmith Gabriel Craig led a team on a gold-prospecting expedition to the Black Hills of South Dakota. With Craig were Rajiv Jaswa and Jenna Wainwright, a couple eager to obtain gold for their wedding rings in an environmentally responsible way; jeweler Todd Pownell, commissioned to make the rings; and metalsmith Amy Weiks, Craig’s fiancée and the project videographer, who also took part in the mining. Their mission was to mine enough gold – about half an ounce – for two wedding bands, and to do it non-invasively.

Craig knew this wouldn’t be easy, but he wanted to highlight the difficulty of responsible mining – and the dangers of large-scale commercial mining – in a way that would be understandable for those outside the studio jewelry world. That’s where most of the demand resides for newly mined gold, primarily used in commercial jewelry and electronics.

The bulk of gold today comes from industrial mines that operate on a huge scale, digging pits thousands of feet deep to refine ore that holds trace amounts of gold. Because concentrations tend to be so low (all of the “easy” gold is gone), an ounce of pure gold can require 30 tons or more of material to be mined and refined.

So what did Craig and his team find during their week spent prospecting? Less than $1 worth of gold after smelting, nowhere near enough to make two rings. He talked to us about the striking lessons they learned about gold sourcing.

When did you first start thinking about where gold comes from? 
I went to a conference in 2005 where Ethical Metalsmiths, an organization that raises awareness about where jewelers’ material comes from, was part of a panel discussion and presentation. That was really an eye-opener. I had been using this material and never really thought about where it came from, beyond the suppliers. It’s not an issue that’s at the forefront of our practice.

Why did you want to go on this expedition, knowing how difficult non-invasive mining is?
I wanted to highlight how difficult it is to extract the amount of gold necessary to create a jewelry product. We had five people working for a full week prospecting, and we got just a tiny amount of gold. If you want to have enough gold for even a couple of rings, you need to move an incredible volume of materials. Even if it’s done without chemicals, you’re still digging huge holes in the earth.

Aren’t there protections in place to make mining safer for the environment?
With the scale and the cyanide used in industrial mining, if it’s handled irresponsibly or if there’s an accident, it’s just absolutely catastrophic. Even if the cyanide is handled and disposed of properly, in all the millions of tons of rock waste, there are naturally occurring elements that have been buried for millennia, and when they are exposed to water and air, they start leaching and oxidizing. You might have all sorts of sulfuric acid runoff, for example.

How much gold did you think you would find?
I thought that 400 grains [approximately 1 ounce] was an achievable goal. What I realized pretty quickly was that the area had been intensively mined in the 19th century, and there was not much gold that was easy to find.

Do you think you would have been more successful if you had prospected in an area that hadn’t been as intensively mined?
Yes. That said, many people in South Dakota still find gold.

Instead of mining, should we be focusing on recycling the gold we already have?
Yes. But it’s complicated. So much gold that’s mined is never put back into the recycling stream. Much of it is bound up in bullion or even in heirloom jewelry. That creates an artificial scarcity: There’s not really a scarcity of gold that has been mined, but there’s a scarcity of gold available to be recycled. There almost needs to be a cultural evolution that says if you have gold that you don’t like, turn it in to create more supply.

I think if we are real about the problem, though, my personal demand (as a jeweler) makes a very small impact. Even if all studio jewelers felt and acted in the same way, we make up a very small percentage of the global demand.

What about fair-trade gold?
Fair-trade gold is really a labor issue. It’s an attempt to establish a model and a system in which people are not being abused, and they’re being paid fairly for the work that they’re doing, which I think is very commendable. But even in artisanal mines or fair-trade mines, there are environmental consequences.

Is it ethical to use gold at all, given the environmental and social costs?
That’s a really good point. I can’t stop mining that’s already happened. But I can influence other people and influence the marketplace toward recycled gold. It’s like acting locally or voting with your dollars.

But it’s a lot easier for a furniture maker to say I’m going to buy my wood only from this sustainable hardwood forest that has these great labor and environmental practices. The precious metal supply chain is very, very opaque, and I think that trying to open that up and make it more transparent will only add value to the really amazing objects made by craftspeople.

You were using tools very similar to 1800s equipment. What about technological advances that make small-scale mining easier or more productive?
We were using a commercially produced sluice, which was our most sophisticated equipment. It’s basically an aluminum chute with a sort of carpet that would trap gold flakes as water ran over it. Most of the small gold claims are on land that’s owned by the United States government, and in those areas, you can’t use any sort of mechanized equipment.

You recently became engaged to another metalsmith, Amy Weiks. Where did the material for her engagement ring come from?
I made it from recycled gold. We included gold that came from significant and meaningful sources for us. There was some gold that we had prospected together in North Carolina, and there was some gold that was scrap from different teachers and professors that we had over the years in our education. It made the ring more meaningful.

Andrew Zoellner is American Craft’s assistant editor.

To see a four-part video of Craig’s Black Hills expedition, click on the links for "The Prospects of Slow Gold" Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV.