Jewellery:
Ever since ancient times people of all cultures have used jewellery for personal adornments, badges of social or official rank and as emblems of religious, social, or political affiliation.
Materials used in ancient jewellery: Jewelry has been made of many kinds of organic and inorganic materials such as hair, feathers, leather, scales, bones, shells, wood, ceramics, metals and minerals. But today when most people refer to jewellery, we refer to precious or semiprecious stones mounted in attractive metals such as gold, silver, platinum, copper and brass. Gold of course being the favorite.
Platinum jewellery is 50 times more rare than gold jewellery. Platinum is one of the world's strongest metals. It weighs 60% more than karat gold. Just holding it in your hand, you can feel the difference.
Culture of Jewelry.
Current knowledge of ancient jewellery comes largely from the preservation of personal objects in tombs or portraits in surviving paintings and sculptures.
One of the most notable being the ancient Egyptians, who's processes of ornamenting metals are still employed today. They produced skillfully, chased, engraved, soldered, repousse and inlaid jewellery, they used commonly gold and silver and inlaid in these metals with semiprecious stones, enamel and glass. The most notable jewellery from ancient Egypt is from the 18th Dynasty
Other Cultures that are notable cultures in the making of jewellery were Middle Eastern from the 3rd and 2nd millennia that produced techniques in granulation, filigree, inlaid gems, closisonna and champleve enamel. Greek and Roman jewellery, gave way to the art of cameo cutting. Scythian Jewelry, the Byzantine use of jewels are also notable. A notable Medieval technique was the use of garnet slices into metal cells in the 7th Century. Other notable Jewelry came during the Renaissance times and the 17th and 18th century.
Interesting facts about gold and costume jewellery.
Gold the metal of the Gods, thought to have come from the Sun. Gold in its pure form is 24 carats, it is a soft metal, much like lead metal, it bends easily. Over the ages man has found that in order to make more durable jewellery, gold had to be mixed with harder metals. This is the reason jewellery is not made in pure gold, it comes in 18 carats, 14 carats and 10 carats, 10 carats being the one with less gold. It also is used to plate or layer other metals to make jewellery often called costume jewellery.
Most gold used in jewellery is alloyed with silver, copper and small amounts of zinc to produce various shades of yellow gold, or with nickel, copper, zinc and rhodium to produce white gold. The color of these gold alloys goes from yellow to white as the proportion of nickel in them increases. Alloying gold with copper creates what is known as rose or pink gold.
The popularity of costume jewellery grew when Movie Stars from Hollywood started wearing costume jewellery in films and in real life around the 1940s. Beauty and originality of design as well as careful craftsmanship marks many pieces from the 30s, 40s and even today's craftsmanship is known for it's quality. Today antique costume jewellery is enjoying a huge revival and desirability that can fetch thousands of dollars on the market. It is known that many high class celebrities use costume jewellery in public, such as the Queen of England who uses costume jewellery copies of her expensive jewellery in public and leave the original jewellery in her safety deposit box under guard. Some of today's celebrities who favor costume jewellery are Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, Diane Deaton, Tina Turner, Madonna, Prince, Demi Moore, Courtney Love and Nicotette Sheridan.
