Issue May 2007 - page 5 (industry news)

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Antique red gold jewelry: some insights

Antique jewelry is often a dark and reddish colored gold. Most people falsely believe that the reason for that is because red gold was fashionable in those times. As a matter of fact, people have traditionally preferred a gold that was exceptionally shiny and warm. In former days this was even more so than today. In order to achieve this aesthetical feature, a fairly complicated technical procedure was performed. Pure (24 carat) gold is a fairly soft material, which is why you never have 100% gold in jewelry. In order to have a stable and strong metal to work with gold has to be mixed with other metals. Creating this alloy modifies its physical properties the first of which is hardness, however it also influences the color. Adding copper would give you a reddish gold whereas silver would give you a whiter and lighter gold at a slightly higher expense.

In the pieces we see today as red gold, the pure gold was mixed with copper and had a deep red gold alloy. The completed jewel was then washed with acids that would dissolve off the copper content of the surface of the alloy, leaving a "skin" of pure gold with a yellow shine. However this superficial layer, softer due to the absence of the copper, would progressively wear of the surface layer leaving the basic alloy re-revealed. Red is thus the consequence of a technical process, but certainly not (in most cases) the appearance that was originally sought.

E. Wijnberg, CEO of Adin comments "We, at Adin have today managed to revive the old technique through which red gold was lightened by etching with acids, which enables us today to bring jewels back one step closer to their original state, with even more care for the image that was in soul the original maker. We're working more how a museum would and we are proud to be, probably, the only company in the world able to supply in depth restoring of antiques."

Gold alloys:

This short paragraphs aims at clarifying some of the reasons why various gold alloys were developed over the centuries. Given gold is a rather soft metal; one modifies its properties by alloying it with other metals. For example, 18-carat gold means that 18 parts out of 24 are pure gold and that they are mixed with 6 parts of another metal.

The choice of the metal and of the proportions (you can have 14 parts of gold and 10 of another metal, which gives 14 carat gold, etc) defines the physical characteristics of the alloy. By doing so, you can influence its hardness, elasticity and color or a combination of those.

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