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 unique wedding bands 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