The light of late September makes us reflect on all things golden. Gold as a word has a charmed connotation; at Coleman Douglas Pearl’s we love both golden pearls and the metal gold. Feel beautifully confident in a perfectly matched golden tone to warm your skin.
The facts about golden pearls: Golden pearls are born in gold-lipped oysters. These oysters are found in the waters around Indonesia, the Philippines and Burma. Like the bond film ‘Goldfinger’ these oysters make all they touch…gold! The mother of pearl within the oyster goes from a pale cream, through to a rich orange gold, or a rich gold with green overtones, and the pearls they produce are the same colours.
The content of actual gold in your (metal) gold: As an investment, gold is favoured when the markets are unstable. In January 2016 one kilo of gold was worth $35,000, today the value is now nearly double at $63,000 per kilo.
Gold in its pure form is found as you see it - surfacing from rivers or mines. Pure gold is called “24 ct gold” and is 99.9% gold or higher. It is incredibly malleable. As soon as you start mixing gold with alloys it becomes stronger yet also more brittle, therefore it cannot be easily bent.
Most of the gold we use has alloys in it to give it strength and colour. White gold includes silver alloys to make it icy white, and rose gold includes copper alloys to make it golden pink. However, do you know what percentage of actual gold is in your gold?
- 22ct gold is 91.6 % gold, hence its rich colour which looks amazing on deeply tanned skin.
- 18ct gold is 75% gold, with a lovely shimmer. Most fine jewellery will be crafted from a minimum of 18ct gold. It is very popular in Europe and the UK.
- 14ct gold is 58.3% gold, although it is popular in the USA we do not use it as we feel that it is not properly ‘gold’ with only slightly more than 50% gold content.
- 9ct gold is 37.5% gold. Historically 9ct gold was a stronger metal than 18ct gold, however nowadays the alloys in 18ct gold are better, making the metal just as strong.
- 7ct gold is barely 29% gold (but popular in Germany).
Gold plating in Coleman Douglas Pearls is achieved by submerging Sterling Silver into a plating solution, attracting ions of pure gold with an electrical charge. ‘Flash-plating’ only plates metal with 0.3 microns of gold, which we do not recommend as the gold wears off quickly. At Coleman Douglas Pearls we use 3 microns of gold, guaranteeing your jewellery remains gold for longer.
At Coleman Douglas Pearls we only use 18ct gold or above and we gold plate our Sterling Silver with pure gold.
