Up to this point in time all jewelry was the end product of a small handcraft industry. Now, in the eighteenth century, factory-made ornaments began to appear. As with so many other everyday objects, quality suffered and the jewelry making art went into decline. The changes were not all negative. Jewelry wearing was finally brought to all the people by less expensive mass production; it was no longer considered a social privilege. True, certain kinds of very expensive jewelry are still indicators of economic privilege, but there is beautiful jewelry available for all. The new technology introduced another noble metal—platinum —for use in jewelry. Mechanization, too, allows for rapid changes in jewelry styles to match changes in styles of dress. Oddly enough, the popularization of jewelry has also brought about a strong revival of interest in new jewelry designs and in individually hand-crafted pieces. Each year, for example, awards are made for original designs entered in the International Diamond Awards competition. There are always some very imaginative pieces among the winners, which serve to encourage still more skilled artists and designers to apply themselves to this ancient pursuit. Check also princess diamond earrings, white gold engagement rings and engagement ring settings

There is considerable labor and time involved in progressing from design to finished jewelry piece. Casting, where feasible, is a method for reproducing a piece exactly, rapidly, and inexpensively. A mold is made of the model diamond jewelry piece, using a special fine sand mixed with water and glycerine. The mold is divided, the model is removed, the mold is reassembled, and molten metal is poured in through an opening previously prepared for the purpose.

When it cools, the new cast is taken out, excess metal removed, and finishing touches made. This kind of casting can only be done if the model is relatively simple and has no undercuts.
A far better casting process, especially for very accurate reproduction of delicate pieces, or those of some complexity, is the “lost-wax” method of centrifugal casting. The metal object to be reproduced is first copied exactly by making a rubber mold.  In turn,  the mold is used to make one or several copies in wax.

The wax commonly used is similar to dental wax, with a melting point between 150 and 170 degrees Fahrenheit. Casting waxes are available in blocks or partially formed rings from which a model of a jewelry piece can be created directly by filing, sawing, and carving. The wax is much easier to work with than the metal itself. By either route—rubber mold or direct work in wax—the wax model is prepared, embedded in a plaster-of-Paris and silica mix to form a new, high-temperature mold. This is now heated in an oven to about 1300 degrees Fahrenheit. The mold hardens, and the wax melts and runs out. To insure complete penetration and casting of every detail when the molten metal is poured in, the mold and its contents are spun in a small centrifugal machine. This packs the metal into every fine detail of the mold made by the “lost wax.” If carefully done, the finished casting requires very little filing or trimming when it is removed from the mold.

The Egyptians and Indians had some appreciation of color in their cheap diamond jewelry. They added manufactured and natural stone and enameling to it, but by and large the best jewelry of most of the ancient world was wrought only in gold. However, by the time of Alexander the Great—about 350 B.C.—gem-stones were more frequently found in Greek jewelry. Rock crystal, agate, sardonyx, carnelian, and even emerald added color. Interest in polychrome jewelry increased, stimulated by contact with Persia. The most riotous use of color in jewelry developed among Indian civilizations along the Indus River. An abundance of colored gemstones in this part of the world, the availability of pearls, and a knowledge of the techniques of colored enamel and glassy paste combined to make it possible.

By the time of the Romans, whose jewelry styles were based on neighboring Greek and Etruscan forms, the various pieces were primarily prized for the massive load of gems they carried. The art of the setting was considered relatively unimportant. When Byzantine jewelry finally evolved, its style was based on those of Greece and Rome but was far richer and more dazzling in color and design because of influences from the east. Tastes in jewelry design by the Middle Ages were governed largely by the ostentation of the display. Enormous and massive creations featuring girdles and large brooches of gems and metal-work were very popular. Later, during the Renaissance, there came along with social, religious, and political changes a revolution in diamond jewelry design. Great artists, such as the Italian sculptor Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571), the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), and the Florentine sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455), turned their attention to the design and production of jewelry. Their designs helped so much to enhance the beauty and popularity of gemstones and pearls that, by the late seventeenth century, the craft passed into the hands of the gem cutters and mounters. At the beginning of the eighteenth century there was a sudden surge of interest in highly intricate ornaments of over-enthusiastic design. Reaction was swift and tastes turned back again toward the early classic forms of jewelry. At this time, too, there was a great increase in the production of inexpensive jewelry pieces for the new, expanding, more affluent middle class.

The ancestry of the jewelry we know can be traced in large part back to its origins in Mesopotamia. The great early civilizations developed along major river valleys. The Su-merian civilization was born in Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Egypt rose along the Nile. India ascended from the Indus River and, in the Far East, China developed on the banks of the Hwang. As these civilizations prospered, so did their goldsmiths. It seems certain that Sumerian o;old-smiths had developed the art and craft to a high degree for their own use by 3000 B.C. Remarkable jewelry pieces have been recovered by archeologists during systematic excavations around Ur of the Chaldees, a great city which was the center of Sumerian culture at that time. In one grave—for Queen Shubad —there was an incredible treasure trove. The Queen herself had a kind of beaded coverlet made of gold, silver, lapis lazuli, carnelian, and other kinds of chalcedony. By her side were found hairpins of gold with lapis lazuli heads. She wore ornate head ornaments fashioned of gold rings, leaves, and flowers. Her ladies-in-waiting—buried with her along with all her other attendants—wore gold diadems and other jewelry.

Sumerians had such great enthusiasm for jewelry and such high artistic taste and skill with it that their influence on the jewelry of other cultures was strong. They handed their art down to the Assyrians and Babylonians. These in turn brought it to the Persians. The Scythians to the north and Hittites to the west were also impressed. The Scythians eventually introduced Sumerian jewelry culture to the distant Chinese, while the Persians took it to Greece, and the Phoenicians spread it throughout the Mediterranean world. None of these widespread cultures made significant improvements in either the art or craft through all these centuries, but at least they kept them alive and adapted them to their own forms.

The art and craft of working metals to make jewelry has been practiced by every culture of man, at one time or another, for tens of centuries. Gold has the most ancient history of them all. Some of the gold jewelry created by craftsmen in ancient India, Egypt, and Assyria has preserved its original character in its descendants for over two thousand years. It is not surprising in modern times to see bracelets, earrings, and other ornaments with filigree work, quaint chainwork, and other features that are remarkably similar to those in pieces taken from Etruscan and Cypriot tombs. There was considerable similarity in some ancient metal jewelry even among widely separated people. Part of this is undoubtedly due to active trading, the migration and dispersal of various cultures, and the wanderings of the craftsmen themselves. Even hundreds of centuries ago there was a strong tendency for art to diffuse itself through the known world. Much of the similarity in the world’s jewelry financing is also due to the independent discovery and rediscovery of the relatively few effective techniques for processing precious metals. Because gold, for example, has certain working characteristics, there are only a limited number of fabrication processes that can be used to shape it. It can be beaten into very thin sheets, shaped by chasing and repousse work, engraved, cast, formed into delicate filigree, twisted and bent into loops and chains, granulated, and soldered. All of these techniques have been used, forgotten, rediscovered, and used again with the ebb and flow of fashion changes and the rise and fall of the craft, along with the cultures that have nourished it and secure jewelry shopping

Through any combination of the techniques discussed here, by filing, buffing, drilling, etching, or in any other way of shaping the metal to his design, the craftsman finally produces a work of art. As with other artistic endeavors, each culture and each century has left its legacy of jewelry which tells us much of the state of the art and the taste of its devotees. Remarkably, the oldest gold ornaments we know were found in Spanish caves where they were left by their Paleolithic tenants. The famous wall paintings in these caves, and the crude, hammered gold amulets found in the cave sediments, date from about 40,000 B.C. Certainly, gold jewelry was one of the first metals found by man. His copper and iron creations perished with use and age but the chemically inert gold persisted and so developed a place for itself as a special metal for special religious and secular purposes.

Silver is a very popular wholesale jewelery’s metal for almost all the same reasons. Its beautiful, bright, white color, its high malleability and ductility, and its resistance to physical damage are very desirable characteristics. Unfortunately, sulfur compounds in the air tend to tarnish and blacken the metal, so that periodic cleaning is required unless an antique look is preferred. (Silver cleaning is not a difficult chore these days, since there are a number of quick-cleaning products on the market.)
Like gold, pure silver is too soft for most jewelry uses. It is usually alloyed with other metals. The silver color is quite persistent even when fairly large percentages of other metals are added. The most popular of these alloys for table flatware and jewelry is sterling silver, a mixture of 92^2 percent silver with 7Vk percent copper, which increases its hardness considerably. Spring silver is sterling silver which has been rolled or drawn to reduce it to as little as one-tenth its original thickness. The process hardens the metal and gives it the spring needed for tie clips, money clips, and similar pieces. Coin silver is less fine, containing only 90 percent silver and the remainder copper. This is about the same alloy that Mexican and American Indian silversmiths use for their traditional jewelry. German silver, or nickel silver, is not silver at all. It is an alloy of 65 percent copper, 17 percent zinc, and 18 percent nickel. Hard and chemically resistant, it is used for imitation silver pieces and for inexpensive table flatware. White metal is used for cheap, imitation silver jewelry. It is an alloy of 90 percent tin, 9 percent antimony and 1 percent copper. Its very low melting point even makes it possible to use rubber molds for casting. The price of silver through the years seems to move steadily upward. Ten years ago it cost about $1 an ounce. Now it is well on its way toward $2 an ounce. The price is not controlled by law, so that rapidly increasing industrial need keeps driving it up. Even so, the metal is far less expensive than gold.

Under United States’ law the price of gold is set at $35 per “fine” or 24-karat ounce. This price is carefully controlled and is applicable to gold used for monetary transactions between countries. A free market in gold also exists in which the price fluctuates somewhat. Except in periods of heavy speculation or international monetary stress the free price hovers close to the controlled price. Because gold is expensive there is a large demand for “gold-filled” and “gold-plated” objects, which cost less but maintain the appearance and wear-resistance of gold. The two terms—filled and plated—are somewhat confusing to the jewelry buying public. In simplest terms, the difference lies in the thickness of the coating of gold applied to a base of some other metal, such as copper. Plating can apply a layer of gold as thin as %oo,ooo of an inch. Because this layer is so thin, the jewelry item will have the appearance of gold, but it will not survive much abrasion or hard wear. A gold-filled object has a much thicker coating. It may bear a notation such as 1/10—14K. This means that the surface layer is 14-karat gold and that it makes up one-tenth of the total weight of the metal. This is a much more durable coat, suitable for most jewelry work.