About HQLA and the jewelry we cut

We make body piercing jewelry. Curved navel bars, hinged clicker rings, flat back labret posts, straight barbells, plugs and tunnels, small cartilage studs, and a short seasonal run of holiday pieces. This site is our catalogue.

What we cut and what we cut it from

The core of the line is 316L surgical steel, an austenitic stainless alloy with a low carbon content that takes a mirror polish and holds a thread. 73 of the 89 pieces here are steel of one grade or another, either bare or plated in gold, rose gold or black. The rest are stone and polymer: natural obsidian, green jade, acrylic and silicone, mostly in the plug and tunnel sizes.

Gauges run 20G, 18G, 16G, 14G. Stretched sizes run from 6mm to 25mm. Those are not marketing ranges, they are counted off the pages in this catalogue, and they move when the line moves.

Why this site is built around two numbers

Most jewelry sells on how it looks. Piercing jewelry does not, or not only. A piece can be the right shape, the right stone and the right finish and still be useless because the wire is 1.2mm where it needed to be 1.6mm. So gauge and length sit on every page here in millimetres, and there is a size finder that filters the whole catalogue by both.

We do not tell anyone what gauge they are. That number came from the piercer who did the work, and it is the piercer who should confirm it.

Where the buying happens

This site has no cart. Every piece links out to the storefront where our listings live, and that is where the order, the payment and the delivery are handled. What sits here is the catalogue and the measurements. More on that arrangement on how this catalogue works.

Talking to us

Questions about a size, a finish or a piece that seems to be missing go to [email protected]. Questions about a piercing itself go to a piercer.