Precious Metals Essentials
Welcome to our Precious Metals Education Section. Precious metals are the foundation of all jewelry. The best-known and most popular precious metals are gold, silver, and platinum. Each of these “ noble metals ” has specific properties.
Jewelers are able to shape precious metals into exquisite forms, flatten them into wafer-thin sheets, and pull them into wires as slender as a thread. They can be melted, poured, cast into molds, carved and engraved. From the ancient past to the present, precious metals have fed our passion for beauty, design, and invention.
To learn more about each metal and browse our topics, please navigate the menus on the right.
Precious Metals Primer Along with their beauty, have unique properties that make them the perfect materials to craft jewelry. Craftsmen throughout history have incorporated precious metals as the base for all jewelry specifically due to their unique characteristics. Today we know more about gold, platinum, and silver than ever before, and the multitude of ways […]
Facts & Features of Precious Metals is the first characteristic of precious metals. They comprise only a small fraction of the Earth’s crust, especially when compared to iron or copper. Gold, Silver, & Platinum Silver, the least costly of the precious metals, comprises about 80 parts per billion (by weight) of the Earth’s crust. Gold […]
Facts & Features of Gold Over ninety elements are found in the Earth’s crust, but for millennia humans have hunted, hoarded, and battled over one in particular: the honey-colored metal, gold. The art of goldsmithing began some six thousand years ago during the Stone Age, and our fascination with this metal continues unabated to this […]
Facts & Features of Platinum When the 16th century Spanish conquistadors encountered platinum in the New World, they dismissed it as platina or “little silver.” But by the 18th century, King Louis XV of France announced that it was the only metal fit for a king. Today, platinum is more expensive than gold and is […]
Facts & Features of Silver Silver, like gold, has been linked since ancient times to religion, coin, and trade. Silversmithing is one of the world’s oldest trades. Silver ornaments, ceremonial vessels, and decorations have played important parts in the religious and spiritual traditions of many civilizations, both ancient and modern. Decorated silver pieces, some 6,000 […]