What Is Fordite?

Most people meet fordite by accident. They spot a pendant, lean in for a closer look, and then somebody tells them it's car paint and they don't quite believe it.

It is car paint. Every bit of it. Here's the whole story, along with honest answers to the things folks ask us most.

So what is fordite, really?

Fordite is automotive paint. Not paint on top of something else. Paint all the way through.

For decades, cars were spray-painted by hand on moving assembly lines. Whatever paint missed the car landed on the racks and skids and tracks around it, and there it stayed. Then the next car came through. And the next. Every time a body rolled into the bake oven, the paint already sitting on those fixtures baked right along with it, hardening layer over layer, year after year.

Eventually the buildup got thick enough that someone had to chip it off to keep the line moving. And somewhere along the way, a person looked at a chunk of it and realized that cut and polished, it looks like stone.

Slice through a piece and you are looking at a cross-section of everything that plant ever painted, in the order it painted them. That's fordite. Folks also call it Detroit agate, and it earns the name.

Why isn't there more of it?

Because the thing that made it doesn't happen anymore.

Modern plants paint electrostatically. The paint carries a charge that pulls it onto the car body itself, which is exactly the point, and very little of it ends up anywhere else. No overspray. Nothing building up on the racks. The industry got cleaner and more efficient, and along the way it quietly stopped making the only material fordite is made of.

So what exists is what exists. It comes from a window in American manufacturing that has closed, and it isn't opening back up.

We'll be honest with you, genuine rough has gotten harder to find and more expensive every year we've worked with it.

How do I know it's real?

That's the right question, and we're glad you asked it.

Fordite has fakes. Layered resin and polymer clay get sold as the real thing, and it has gotten worse as genuine rough has gotten scarce. Anybody shopping for fordite ought to be asking.

Here's the only assurance we think is worth much: we didn't buy these finished.

We bought our rough fordite several years back, and every piece we sell was cut, shaped, sanded, and polished by hand in our shop right here in Ball Ground, Georgia. The cross-section you're looking at is one we made ourselves. We've seen the inside of every single piece.

And here's what we can't tell you. We can't name the plant your piece came from, or the decade, and we wish we could. Fordite changes hands through collectors and estate lots and auctions, and its history rarely travels along with it. We'd rather tell you plainly what we know and what we don't than guess and sound certain about it.

Why is every piece different?

Because every piece is a cross-section of a different spot, in a different plant, at a different moment.

The colors in yours are the colors that plant was spraying. The order of the bands is the order the cars came through. The pattern depends on where the slab got cut and at what angle. Two pieces off the same chunk won't match, let alone two from different places entirely.

That's why each of ours has a name of its own. And it's why, once one sells, that pattern is gone. Not sold out. Gone.

Can I wear it every day?

You can, and you should. That's what it was made for.

Cured automotive enamel is tough stuff. It spent years hardening in a bake oven before anybody ever touched it, which is the whole reason it can be cut and polished like stone. It's also lighter than it looks, so even a good-sized piece sits comfortably all day.

How do I take care of it?

Very little, and nothing complicated.

Fordite may dull a bit with wear. Buff it gently with automotive polish or a soft polishing cloth and the depth comes right back.

Don't soak it, don't scrub it, and keep harsh chemicals away from it. Whatever your piece is set in will have care needs of its own, and those are all in our jewelry care guide.

Why do people call it Detroit agate?

Because it looks like banded agate, and because Detroit is where the story starts. Collectors began saying it and the name stuck.

The name is a little bigger than the truth, though. Fordite came out of auto plants all over the country, not only Michigan. Mopar paint is its own thing entirely. And when we look closely at some of the older pieces, we can tell we're looking at plants that plainly weren't running the same colors as anybody else. Different factory, different palette, different years on the line.

It isn't a gemstone and it isn't a mineral. It never came out of the ground at all. It came off the floor of an American auto plant, and we think that's a better story anyway.

What we make from it, and what's left

That changes as the rough gets used up, and what it becomes next may not be what it is today.

Whatever is current lives in the Fordite Jewelry collection. Every piece there is one of one, and when one sells that pattern is gone, so what you see really is what's left.

Still have a question? Email us at hello@belleandsouthern.com. A real person reads it, and we'd genuinely rather you asked than wondered.