Some jewellers are specialized in manufacturing jewellery made of gold in various colours.

Gold ornaments differ from each other not just in terms of shape or intended use but also shade or even colour. Colour of gold depends on content and type of other metals composing the alloy as they determine the tint of gold to be white (obtained by alloying gold with nickel and palladium), red and greenish (alloy of gold, silver and copper), rare green and blue gold, numerous alloys of yellow gold.

Dark violet gold alloy, called amethyst gold, is composed of pure gold (78.5%) and aluminium (21.5%) (18 carat alloy). It is as brittle as glass and therefore it is used as an ornament in yellow or white gold ware. So far the alloy of gold and aluminium has not been used and gold of such colour has not been manufactured. The amethyst gold era was ushered in by a German company of Knoedler from Pforzheim. The author of the new technology is Dr. Dreher who developed an appropriate alloy recipe, casting technology and a method of finishing the ready-made jewellery made of amethyst gold. Recently other jeweller’s have shown interest in the manufacturing of such a ware as a response to the present fashion for non-ferrous metals.

Blue gold was first produced in 1980’s in Switzerland by Ludwig Mueller. The manufacturing technology is protected by a patent but it is known that the blue metal is formed by combining gold with iron. First azure gold products were presented in 1994 and one year later they were brought to Poland to be presented at Jewellery Fair in Warsaw. Blue Gold is still a novelty in jeweller’s trade and therefore it is highly demanded by the jewellers. The market is slowly accustomed to the fact that gold does not need to be yellow. Blue gold is considered more an additional ornamental element, similarly to a gemstone. There is no practice to make products of blue gold only. It is composed with yellow or white gold, platinum or diamonds.

More recently there has been a fashion for jewellery made of white metals including white gold. In professional terminology, white gold is referred to as palladium gold or nickel gold as it is palladium or gold which, if added to pure gold, cause discolouration of gold and give it a tint similar to silver or platinum ware. First white gold alloys appeared in the market in 1912. In the interwar period it was usually nickel alloy that was used for goldsmithing purposes while palladium gold was mainly utilized in dentistry for production of crowns. Nowadays, we witness a reverse situation as the goldsmiths are more willing to use palladium gold, the processing of which is much easier as compared to nickel alloys, and similar to yellow gold processing.