Gold jewellery in the old days and now

Gold jewellery existed certainly as early as around 3000 BC. It is that period that the oldest discoveries made in the Sumer land date back to. Gold ware found in Egyptian tombs was used as jewellery. One of the most famous jewellers were Cretan goldsmiths and later Etruscan goldsmiths who popularized gold granulation technology. The granulation enables to coat various objects with gold granules. Since then until now Italy has been considered to be the goldsmithing centre. Italian jewellery is sold all over the world. The Italian goldsmiths use more than 400 t of gold ore a year and they export 2/3 of their products. In the beginning of the 1990’s new goldsmithing centres appeared in the world including Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. Also the jeweller’s industry of Japan is not much behind as it consumes annually approx. 100 t of gold for domestic needs.
Gold as such is soft therefore alloys containing other metals such as silver, zinc, copper, palladium or nickel are used for jewellery products. They not only make gold harder but also change its colour and smoothen the surface. Higher content of gold in a product reduces the risk of allergy of the person wearing the jewellery. The current fashion for coloured gold resulted in increased production of white, amethyst (dark violet) or blue gold jewellery in addition to yellow, red or pink gold jewellery products.
Following the changing fashion and more and more demanding customers’ requirements the jewellery products offered change also to adopt very modern or even avant-garde forms. It is quite frequent now that the, recently fashionable two-colour jewellery is made by combining shining gold with mat metals (silver, platinum or white gold). People continuously expect new jewellery designs while the designers create veritable works of art differing from traditional style to meet those requirements.
Out of the small group of precious metals used for jewellery purposes gold is still the most popular and most frequently used one. Gold as such is soft therefore alloys containing other metals such as silver, zinc, or copper are used for jewellery products not only to make gold harder but also to change its colour and smoothen the surface. White gold is a trade name. White gold alloy is obtained by adding not only copper and silver but also palladium or nickel to gold to produce proper tint (metallic-silver with yellow glow). When you make a decision to buy gold jewellery you must pay attention to gold assay. Gold of 0.585 (14ct) assay is sold most frequently. It is a perfect combination of good quality, colour and price. Gold of richer assays (18ct, 2ct) is unfortunately less durable while that of worse assays (8ct, 10ct) has ugly colour and may cause allergic reactions.