metals

 Precious metals for jewelry include Gold, Silver and Platinum.

They are valued for their beauty, their workability and except for silver, their immutability and resistance to environmental wear and tear.  

Very early silver objects are often valued higher than gold because the silver simply does not last over time, making the pieces rarer. If you dig up a thousand-year-old sword hilt made of silver, you may still recognize it when it lays in the ground, but it may actually be a simple mush of silver oxide rather than a piece of metal .  The presence of sulfur and moisture actually speeds up the deterioration. Never try to polish VERY old silver without the advice of an expert in antiquities.

I own several pieces of one thousand- and two-thousand-year-old silver.  They are a dull lead grey.  The urge to polish them is very powerful but I don't do it.   

If you have silver that is in good shape with little tarnish, store it in pacific cloth bags and try to keep it from the air.  Do not put them in plastic or anywhere near elastics.  If you are storing silver for display, try to keep a piece of chalk near it as the chalk absorbs moisture and the associated gasses that tarnish the silver quickly.  There is much sulfur in the air from internal combustion and that is the major tarnish culprit.  Plastic and elastics may contain sulfur.  Boxes are available that are lined with pacific cloth.

Gold has been valued since prehistoric times.  It has always been found...well, anywhere really... but mainly among the pebbles in fast moving streams or in seams in white quartz. The stones could be broken easily and the gold melted out of the blocks of the stone.  Native metals are metals that are(lying around) made of a single element.  This native gold could be pounded to shapes or sheets (malleable) or it could be drawn into wire by passing it through successively smaller holes in harder metals to stretch it into wire...sometimes extremely thin without breaking.  People were smelting gold fairly early in our history.  Smelting metals only requires ceramic or stone vessels and charcoal.  Both fairly old technology.

It also melts at a relatively low temperature, again giving opportunities to work it by hand with the low technology that was available to early man. Gold is very rare.

The purity of gold that is used in jewelry varies from culture to culture and according to the technology available to that culture.

Europeans rarely use the 14 Karat gold that is commonly used in America.  In India, gold is GOLD and mixing other metals into it making a lower percentage of gold is looked down upon.

Ancient cultures used pure gold as well, like in Egypt.  Occasionally a natural alloy or mix of gold and silver was found and this beautiful metal was called Electrum.  It is roughly similar looking to the White Gold that is used in modern times.  Gold was associated with the sun and Electrum was associated with the moon.

Gold is almost universally marked for its gold content by the jeweler or smelter.  Pure gold is 24 Karat 100% (diamond weight is expressed in carats, explained later)( once in a while on older pieces you will find the gold purity marked with CT.  I have a piece of 9ct gold from England.  I do not know how widepread this practice is.) or it can also be marked 1000.  18 Karat gold is 3/4 gold and is also marked 750 for 75%.  14 Karat gold is 14 parts gold out of 24.  It can also be marked 585 for 58.5%. 10 Karat gold is 10 parts gold out of 24. It can be marked 375 for 37.5%.

The English often use 9 karat gold in inexpensive jewelry.

GP..gold plate

There is also gold-filled jewelry which is a sheet of gold layered over a base metal.  It lasts longer than gold plated metal, but eventually can wear through to show the base metal.  You may see:  1/20-12K (or other K marks).  This means that one twentieth of the metal is gold sheet and that the sheet of the gold used to coat the surface was 12 Karat. The layer of gold is not plated on but rather sheer force or weight is used to forge the metals into one.  This may also be marked or referred to as Rolled Gold or you may find Rolled Gold Plate.  Many very old pieces of jewelry may only be available in Gold Filled metal.

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There are strange marks on much new jewelry.  Anything you cannot identify from the information above you should beware of and question the maker. 

 

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This should not stop you from buying these old pieces as there may be no other examples of some types and periods of jewelry available. (despite their high cost)

  Similarly, rather than white gold, you may find diamonds and other precious stones mounted in silver to make that nice look of white stone in white metal. (Platinum and white gold were not used long ago.)  The antique jewelry items are often very gray or black and you may never be able to clean them back to white.  You could actually end up damaging the piece by trying to do so.  These Georgian and Victorian (or earlier) antiques can be very valuable despite the fact that they are not solidly gold in whatever Karat.  Pieces from early periods are very valuable and rare because the real gold items are often melted down to make newer style jewelry over time.

The British Crown Jewels have only perhaps half a dozen old or "original" jewels from early periods because after Charles I was executed many of the crown jewels were melted down and sold by the Puritan Parliament.  Some were bought or given back after the restoration of the monarchy.  There is a pair of Queen Elizabeth I's earrings incorporated into one of the crowns, a blue sapphire (St Edward's Sapphire) from very early times, the old spoon used to pour oil on the head of the monarch at coronation and a large red Spinel called the Black Prince's Ruby (not a ruby) that I know for certain are there.  There is a huge sapphire on the back of the Imperial State Crown called the Stuart Sapphire, which I assume postdates Charles I.  Strangely this is a huge and beautiful stone but it has a hole in it and is rather flawed.  

Similarly, the VERY early crown jewels (including the ancient crown decorated with strawberry leaves) were mostly lost by King John, who accidentally sank most of his treasure in a bog while crossing The Wash (a huge swampy coastal area) in eastern England while running from his Barons.

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Gold should be marked with that single large number or the smaller number with the letter K after it.  If there is anything else other than trademarks, definitely question a vendor carefully.  Lots of variations appear that are not real or all gold.

For instance, silver may have a mark EPNS which simply means electro plated nickel silver.

Platinum is nearly always marked 1000 but other alloys are possible...900 is common.

Silver is usually marked 925 or 92.5% which is referred to as Sterling. This is a sturdy, more wear resistant mix of metals.  It can also, commonly be marked 800 (European) or 900 ("coin") silver.  Other marks are common as well. Coin or Pure Coin are common marks.  Again these are just to represent a percentage of precious metal with the mark.

The English have a fairly complicated system of metal quality marks using symbols for place of manufacture, Monarch that it was made under, city of origin, percentage of precious metal and the mark of the maker. Other countries have similar systems.  I have a Belgian silver sugar and creamer.  I had to jump through hoops to determine just what I had.

Gold in its pure form is beautiful and easy to work, and it is consistently valuable, but it lacks durability, so if you wear a bracelet made of it, one solid rap on a hard object or surface can permanently ruin the appearance of the piece.  The upside is the ease of melting it down and having it recast as a new piece of jewelry.

That is why (as well as the cost) that modern people use mixes of metals to make jewelry. Mixing the gold with silver (to produce white), nickel (to produce green) or copper (to produce pink) actually has a secondary effect of hardening the metal.  White gold is dramatically harder than yellow gold. In fact, white gold is so hard and has so much tensile strength that it is used to make springs in valuable musical instruments.

Occasionally, I was called upon to cut a ring off someone's hand.  Some people panic with a ring stuck on their finger and when I got a single cut through the ring and started to stretch it open, they struggled and paniced so that I lost my grip, making the ring spring back and really grab the flesh of the person.  After that I had people available to hold their arm still or I cut the ring twice(literally in half) to get it off someone's hand.

This, of course, makes repair of the ring much more difficult and expensive, but I don't like the sight of blood everywhere.

Another effect of this color change in the metal is that no matter what color you used to make a piece of jewelry, you can vary the color of the "claws" that hold the stones to match or blend well with the color of the stone so that the claw more nearly disappears to the eye.

A yellow gold ring may look a bit strange with a white diamond, offending the eye and also affecting the color of the stone to the eye.(more on this later)

An ancient culture called the Scythians that lived in the area from Asia Minor into western Asia produced great masterpieces of gold in very early times.  They invented or at least used a strange property of the metal.  If you place particles of gold on a charcoal surface and heat them, they will draw themselves up into natural spheres that sit on the surface. (Like when water beads up) One can also pour gold from a height onto cold metal and the stream of metal will actually bounce producing red hot beads of gold.  Then they can be placed piece by piece on a gold surface that has a copper bearing solution on it.  When heated, they are soldered onto the surface permanently to make permanent patterns.  This was done along with wires, castings and other forms made of the metal to make amazing and masterful patterns.

Beads were also made by mixing flakes and grindings from gold into ground up charcoal.  The entire mass of charcoal would then be heated, and the gold would form beads in the mass to be picked or washed out.

Gold can also be pounded flat.  Then it can be placed (in early times using leather) between flexible material layers and that book of layers is then pounded till the gold is flattened into sheets almost down to one molecule thick.  This is called gold leaf.  It can be layered on a surface and rubbed on to a surface to become more or less a permanent skin on it.  It can also be put on a surface with a glue or "size" to make it more or less permanent.  It is usually buffed or burnished with a smooth, curved metal object to make it shine.

This has been done for millennia.  Check your Old Testament for references to "Beaten" gold on the outside of the Arc of the Covenant.  See also: Indiana Jones.

Very expensive homes in past ages might have gold leaf on the outside of wooden muntin bars holding window glass in place.  This kept the wood from deteriorating quickly in the weather.

Another interesting property of gold and probably most metals is that "cast" gold pieces are softer than forged or stamped out pieces.

The pressure of the forged and stamped process actually forces the molecules of the metal into denser and more organized a form.  This will be tougher than a loosely organized cast molecular body.

Keep this in mind if you are having jewelry made.  If you want it tough, it may be wise to use manufactured, stamped out motifs rather similar shapes that are cast from molten metal in a mold. This may be of no consequence at all in a tiara sitting in your hair, but it may make a great difference in a bracelet or ring that is subject to a lot of wear and tear on your hand.

  

Similarly, if you cast even a very sharp blade for a knife, it will not be nearly as tough as a forged blade. Even your butter knife blade is stamped out in a machine.

PLATINUM

Platinum is from a group of metals that also includes palladium and irridium.  It is naturally very white, but it may have a tendency to look a bit gray.

It is quite tough and is a natural complement to white stones like diamonds.  

It has special problems in repair and resizing.  I believe that gold must often be used to solder it as I understand that there is no solder made from the platinum that the average shop or craftsman is going to keep in stock, and he may have to alter the shop to allow for platinum solder.  Each precious metal requires different routines and processes to work them.  You may see a slight yellowish line where work has been done on a piece of platinum jewelry.  

It was very popular from the end of the 19th century into the twenties and thirties.  It is still popular today, but it is not the first metal most people think of as white gold is so much cheaper.