When was platinum first used in jewelry

On the cutting edge, in , Cartier introduced all platinum, luxury jewellery in its iconic garland style. Finer work, with thinner shanks, and stones set closer together with smaller almost invisibly set prongs, kept the pieces strong yet light in look and lighter in weight, perfect for highlighting diamonds.

The stronger prongs, pushed down once, stayed securely in place — a bonus for those new to working with platinum. To improve strength, gain acceptance and add prestige to jewellery, platinumwas sintered, rolled, or brazed over alayer of gold using existing silver over gold technology.

The tenuous bond between gold and platinum, due to different expansion and concentration temperatures, created stress, brittleness and gaps wherever the two diffused and interfaced. Platinum demand surged. Fashion, worldwide media and huge new South African and Canadian mines fuelled the Art Deco black and white architectural look. Examples of seams and visible joins on die-struck platinum jewellery.

Though platinum could be melted and cast, hand-fabrication for fine jewellery and die striking for mass production were the prevalent techniques. Platinum ruled! In North America, during World War I and II, platinum was deemed a strategic metal used for rifle and engine parts, explosives and the making of armaments. It was forbidden in jewellery. Alternatives were needed. The war hardships distracted most from the overlooked and underused patent for white gold gold, palladium and zinc.

In , Belais Company patented, trademarked, branded and heavily advertised a popular 18K white gold. Well-received, lightweight, filigree, die-struck pieces were rapidly produced and at a lower cost than platinum. Until the onset of World War II, platinum dominated the higher-end worldwide jewellery market with white gold popular for coloured stone and smaller diamond pieces in the USA, and yellow gold popular in the UK.

In , during WWII, palladium became a stand-in for platinum. While lighter, harder and white, its demand fizzled post war.

By the s all-platinum jewellery roared back. The century old heirlooms we see today are a testament to the enduring properties of platinum. Many current platinum designs feature karat gold accents. This combination of metals enhances the unique qualities of each. Owning a piece of platinum jewelry is a distinct pleasure. You can feel and see the difference; platinum is heavier and denser than other metals and it has an elegant, rich white luster.

Buying platinum jewelry is a wise investment. Platinum is one of the rarest, purest and most enduring metals available. An experienced jeweler can assist you in selecting platinum jewelry that will bring pleasure to you and the recipient for years to come.

Why is platinum's purity important to me? Platinum is hypoallergenic, resists tarnish, is one of the strongest precious metals in the world and is extremely durable. Is platinum the same as white gold? No, it is quite different.

Because of strong consumer preference for platinum's pure white luster, white gold was substituted in platinum's absence. To create white gold, yellow gold is alloyed with nickel and zinc and small amounts of copper and silver , thereby achieving a white metal look. Platinum has purity, strength, rarity, durability, and a natural rich, white color.

How should I care for and clean my platinum jewelry? Platinum jewelry should be cleaned the same way you clean other fine jewelry. Use a good pre-packaged jewelry cleaner available from your local jeweler or have it professionally cleaned by your jeweler.

As with all precious jewelry, store with care, not allowing pieces to touch or scratch each other. Will platinum scratch? Signs of wear, including scratches, will inevitably appear in all precious metals, even with platinum.

Due to platinum's amazing durability and strength, however, there is little or no material loss when it is scratched. Is platinum fashionable? How will it coordinate with my gold jewelry? Yes, platinum is fashionable! It is very fashionable to wear platinum jewelry with your other fine gold jewelry. Given that this appears the only use of a platinum alloy by Egyptian goldsmiths, however, it is likely that the latter is the case.

How different it was on the other side of the Atlantic, some years later. Indians of the La Tolita culture, living on the border between Colombia and Ecuador near platinum-rich alluvial deposits, started to use platinum alloys in their jewelry. Quite a few artifacts such as nose rings, masks and earrings have been found to contain platinum parts, deliberately separated from other metals and crafted to form white metal objects.

Quite an achievement, considering that the melting point of platinum lies at How did they do it? The alluvial deposits which formed the source for platinum to the La Tolita culture mainly contain traces of the metal in the form of minute grains, although the odd bigger nugget is known to have been found.

These rare, larger nuggets could theoretically be worked straight out the river when they were of a suitable, malleable alloy. Although native copper-iron-platinum alloys occur in Colombia they are uncommon; there is one known example from the area of a copper-platinum alloy nugget being used to make a small penannular nose-ring. So… that explains the origin of one object. What about the others?

The Indians must have had more advanced methods to craft their platinum alloy objects. The small grains of platinum were mixed with a little gold dust and small portions placed upon a piece of wood-charcoal. When the gold runs it will coat the grains of platinum with gold. If the piece is now further heated by means of the blow-pipe , let us say, the following will take place: a portion of the fused gold permeates the platinum and simultaneously a little of the latter is dissolved in the molten gold.

This mixture of gold and platinum can now withstand a light blow of the hammer, especially when hot. By alternately forging and heating it is possible gradually to build up an homogeneous mixture. All the specimens found are small, which is natural, since they cannot be larger if they are to be exposed to the maximum degree of heat that can be produced from a bit of charcoal and a blowpipe.

Apart from using this technique to create a platinum alloy suitable to craft small solid objects, the goldsmiths of the La Tolita culture also used the sintered platinum alloy to create foils. The acquired thin sheets of platinum were then used to plate gold objects by hammering and heating them onto the pre-formed gold. In , an Englishman named Charles Wood laid his hands on some Columbian native platinum. He passed the samples on to his brother in law, William Brownrigg who was a physician and scientist in England.

The history of platinum continues in France, where in a Professor in Chemistry, Pierre-Joseph Macquer, had a huge burning mirror built in order to attempt the melting of platinum, an event which proved to be successful but laborious.

Several attempts, with small buttons of malleable platinum as an outcome, took place over the next twenty years, almost all in or around Paris by various scientists. None of these men was able to produce workable platinum in any significant quantities though. That honor befalls Pierre Francois Chabaneau , a Frenchman who, from on, was working in Spain as a French and Physics teacher at a seminary near San Sebastian.

Shortly after he took the chair of Chemistry and made the production of malleable platinum his main stay. In , after just three years, he had developed a very successful method. The King of Spain ordered secrecy of the process and gave Chabaneau a laboratory devoted to the refinery of platinum.

The process with which Chabaneau created malleable platinum is said to be a powder metallurgic one. Powdered platinum, acquired from grinding the brittle substance that was the product of early platinum purification, would be pressed, heated and hammered in order to obtain a solid, workable ingot.

Around that same time a French court jeweler, Marc Etienne Janety, was also working with platinum. In he crafted a sugar bowl out of platinum for Louis XVI.

Janety used a different method than Chabaneau: the arsenic process. Platinum alloys with arsenic at low temperatures. From the molten platinum-arsenic mix a brittle, solid bar could be cast. Further heating in stages could then be applied to drive off the arsenic, producing a pure platinum bar which could be forged to shape.

The French Revolution , followed by the Napoleonic wars completely disrupted scientific advances in France and Spain. As a result the next chapter in the history of platinum takes place in England. Around the year two British scientists, William Hyde Wollaston and Smithson Tennant, acquainted since their days together at Cambridge University, joined forces in a quest to produce a commercially viable platinum alloy.