Is gold getting old? How high jewellers fell for cheaper metals and bolder colours, from titanium at Chopard and aluminium at De Beers, to Boucheron’s silica aerogel and Hemmerle’s bronze infusions

Dec 19 , 2022

Roses depicted in aluminium, white gold and old mine-cut diamonds. Photo: Hemmerle

Jewellery 2022

Forget traditional gold and platinum – high-end jewellery houses are pushing boundaries, with designers like Wallace Chan and Cindy Chao favouring titanium for its strength and lightness

Hong Kong’s Austy Lee still vouches for precious gold, but uses coatings like nano-ceramic e-coating, rhodium plating and enamels for colour, while Sarah Ho often works with recycled metals

For centuries, the crafting of jewellery has remained consistent. The wooden work bench with the leather pouch to catch a straying gemstone and the various specialist tools would be as familiar to a Renaissance or Georgian-era jeweller as they are to someone working in the ateliers of Place Vendôme today.

Similarly, the gemstones themselves are the same, but when it comes to other materials used, there’s a quiet technical revolution going on in the use of new metal alloys, colourful coatings and finishes. Jewellery houses are pushing boundaries, producing evermore innovative ideas to create new narratives for their jewellery and to excite connoisseurs and collectors.

The Mirage ring with a peridot central stone is made from an alloy of aluminium and titanium. Photo: Sarah Ho

We are seeing it in the introduction of titanium and aluminium alloys for gem setting and the adding of colourful metal finishes that complement coloured gems, adopting technology from various fields including the space industry.

Boucheron’s use of aerogel – a fragile silica material created by Nasa that is 99.98 per cent water – enclosed in a shell of rock crystal for a pendant in its 2020 Contemplation high jewellery collection is an ideal example.

Claire Choisne at Boucheron is a creator with a visionary approach who explores cutting-edge technology to add an original twist to her jewellery. “I feel free to use materials that have an emotional value and aerogel to me expresses the beauty of the sky, which you couldn’t find in a diamond,” Choisne said at the launch.

The following year she collaborated with French materials producer Saint-Gobain to create an innovative iridescent coating for her Holographique collection. The hi-tech coating process involves applying layers of a molten spray of titanium and silver powder oxides on white ceramic and rock crystal. The resulting hues dance across the jewel as the light falls on from different directions.

Opalescence brooch and earrings from the Holographique high jewellery collection. Photo: Boucheron

“I wanted to create a collection around the topic of colour and find a new approach to the natural phenomenon of the rainbow and the Northern Lights,” Choisne explained.

The results were impressive, notably in the flexible Holographique necklace, which she described as “having a futuristic, hypnotic effect”.

Other advancements are in metal alloys as designers look to materials other than gold and platinum. Titanium became widely available in jewellery in the 1990s although it is commonly found in anything from aviation to Porsche engines. Its strength, anticorrosive and hypoallergenic qualities – and most of all its light weight – have appealed to art jewellers like Wallace Chan and Cindy Chao, and it is widely used by major jewellery brands like Chopard, especially for large pieces.

Technical advancements with the metal have made new colours possible. Anodising titanium is an electrolytic process that produces a rainbow of hues, which can be chosen to match a gemstone.