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About the Store | Jewelry & Gemstones
What is white gold and where does it come from?
In it's pure form, gold is too soft to be used for general jewelry although there are some cultures which do wear pure gold jewelry, it would need to be heavily made and carefully used. It is usual for gold to be mixed with other metals to produce an alloy. Throughout history people have preferred the color of gold jewelry to remain close to that of pure gold itself, so this jewelry is made using gold alloys. Other metals mixed with gold to produce allows include copper and silver, which are the common components of most yellow gold alloys. Nickel, zinc and palladium are used when creating white alloys.
White gold alloys became fashionable in the 1920's, mainly as a substitute for platinum, which had itself recently become fashionable. Platinum is quite expensive, needs greater temperatures than gold, and is generally considered harder to work with than gold, although it is ideal for use in diamond settings. At least three patents were issued for different "recipes" of white gold alloys during the 1920's, using different components to produce the whitening or "bleaching" effect. Simply mixing a white and a yellow metal together does not just produce a pale yellow colour, alloying produces a difference in the atomic structure which alters the reflectivity of light of different wavelengths.
The commonest metal which causes a significant bleaching effect in gold is nickel, which has the great advantage of being inexpensive, and also providing, in 19 carat allows, a good color match for platinum, however its color matching in 14 and 9 carat alloys is poor.
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