Antique jewelry glossary

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Titanium

Titanium has strength, corrosion resistance and excellent biocompatibility, and is therefore an obvious candidate for use in jewelry. Its attraction to jewelry designers, however, is the ability to produce a range of both bright and subtle colors by anodizing or heat tinting. Artists have used titanium to create modern pieces which have met with critical acclaim.

Titanium is a chemical element with the symbol Ti and atomic number 22. It is a light, strong, lustrous, corrosion-resistant (including to sea water and chlorine) transition metal with a grayish color.

Titanium can be alloyed with iron, aluminium, vanadium, molybdenum, among other elements, to produce strong lightweight alloys for aerospace (jet engines, missiles, and spacecraft), military, industrial process (chemicals and petro-chemicals, desalination plants, pulp, and paper), automotive, agri-food, medical (prostheses, orthopaedic implants, dental implants), sporting goods, jewelry, and other applications.

Titanium was discovered in England by William Gregor in 1791 and named by Martin Heinrich Klaproth for the Titans of Greek mythology.

From: Wikipedia

Titanium

The following is from: An Illustrated Dictionary of Jewelry, autor: Harold Newman, publishers: Thames and Hudson

A metallic element, discovered in 1789, that has been used mainly in industry because of its lightness, strength, and high melting point, but has in recent years been used is some jewelry, owing to the attractive range of colours that it acquires by being heated. The colours, depending on the degree of applied heat, include blue, pink, and brown, and they can be produced on limited areas on designs.

The disadvantages to its use include its hardness, limited ductility and malleability, difficulty to cut, and inability to be soldered, thus making it suitable mainly for articles made of components that can be fitted together.