Black sterling, blue gold, & other strangely-colored metals

Jewelry Discussion
1

Greetings, all.

My best friend just posted a link to a lovely ring she wants her
hubby to buy her for their anniversary. The web site claims it’s
black sterling. Not liver of sulfur black, either-- Black black.
This also reminded me of another website a friend had pointed to that
had some seriously weird-colored gold rings. Colors like dark blue,
black, a very bright flamingo pink (I don’t mean rose gold- I mean
brighter-than-my-niece’s-bedroom pink), green (which looks a bit
more like chartreuse), fire-engine red, royal purple, chocolate
brown. I’m assuming that they must be plated with something.

Here’s the site for the black silver rings:
http://www.ganoksin.com/gnkurl/ep81oj

And here’s the site with the funky-colored golds:
http://www.ganoksin.com/gnkurl/ep81ok

Does anyone here have more on these things? Seen some in
person? If so, how do they wear? Do they flake as badly as I think
they would- the silver especially? Have any of you dealt with trying
to repair one? s this just some new kind of technology I’m not
familiar with?

Since my friends all know I work with metal & make jewelery, they
ask me about stuff like this & I have no idea what to tell them. No
matter how much I’d love crimson-red & deep black metals to play
with, those rings just don’t look real. I know you can make colored
golds with different alloys but I’ve never seen colors that bright
that weren’t enameled, epoxy, or some kind of paint. Either plated &
enameled would be poor choices in engagement / wedding / anniversary
/ worn-every-day rings, I would think.

Sharon,
Artist, Metalsmith, Chaos Magnet

2

Hi Sharon,

No surprise the colored golds look fake: they’re CAD renderings, not
real pictures.

Reading the info, it looks like they’re taking standard 14K, and
doing a weird rhodium plate over it. So it’s just a plate job, and
won’t hold up to any kind of everyday wear.

(even says so.) Weird, but nothing especially new or neat.

Same thing with the black sterling rings: CAD renderings, not real
pictures. Didn’t say, but it’s probably a black rhodium plate. At
those pricepoints, it can’t be much else.

There are real blue and purple golds. The blue is sort of very faded
denim blue, and the purple is sort of dark pinkish. Both of them are
hellishly difficult to work with, and aren’t exactly metal any more.
(Intermetallic compounds, as I recall.) (The blue is alloyed with
Iron, and the purple with aluminum.) They’re insanely brittle, and
are usually set like a stone, rather than being used as metal. I
recall one of the casting houses in LA was doing some work with a
not-quite-as-brittle purple gold a few years ago. They did a couple
of rings with it, and they didn’t shatter instantly, but that’s the
last I heard.

Regards,
Brian

3

it is plated right in the description Black Plated looks horrible,
but what better way for the dishonest to say it is sterling and a
specific gold content and make it untestable. Black stone in a black
ring hmm definitely a gimmic as opposed to a design tool.

JMHO Teri

4

I noticed at the bottom of the listing, it said "black gold plated"
if that helps.

5

Sharon-All

of the images look to me very much like CAD images. No real metaland
stones.

Jo Haemer
timothywgreen.com

6

No matter how much I’d love crimson-red & deep black metals to play
with, those rings just don’t look real. I know you can make colored
golds with different alloys but I’ve never seen colors that bright
that weren’t enameled, epoxy, or some kind of paint. Either plated &
enameled would be poor choices in engagement / wedding / anniversary
/ worn-every-day rings, I would think.

Apparently, they aren’t the best choice…

(from the website…) “Special Note: This ring is a designer
exclusive high-maintenance jewelry piece. Pink gold (pink rhodium on
14k solid white gold) will wear off in about one to two year of
wearing making your ring look exquisite vintage by exposing solid
white gold base on the edges and flat surfaces. Pink rhodium
reapplication is not necessary, however if desired, we provide two
year (2 time) free pink rhodium reapplication on all designer pink
gold rings for all ClassicEngagementRing customers.”

So, this means your ring is wearable for about 2 years? And sorry, I
think they’re ugly as sin. :confused:

7

Hi Sharon,

On the web page you gave for the bright pink gold rings, it says:
"This ring is a designer exclusive high-maintenance jewelry piece.
Pink gold (pink rhodium on 14k solid white gold) will wear off in
about one to two year of wearing making your ring look exquisite
vintage by exposing solid white gold base on the edges and flat
surfaces. Pink rhodium reapplication is not necessary, however if
desired, we provide two year (2 time) free pink rhodium reapplication
on all designer pink gold rings for all ClassicEngagementRing.com
customers. This service is available with select jewelry
manufacturers U. S. nationwide for a fee to maintain pink rhodium
color for your jewelry piece for continuous wearing over it’s
lifetime.

Also available in yellow gold, rose gold, white gold, black gold,
red gold, blue gold and 950 platinum."

Now there’s a great marketing concept: “exclusive high-maintenance
jewelry”!!! I love it!

Janet in Jerusalem

8 
Reading the info, it looks like they're taking standard 14K, and
doing a weird rhodium plate over it. So it's just a plate job, and
won't hold up to any kind of everyday wear. 

(even says so.) Weird, but nothing especially new or neat.

I gotta say at least the page with the colored stuff was reasonably
open about it. to quote their page on one of the rings (a garish
unrealistic flourescent pink suggesting the CAD person had no idea
what the stuff actually looks like), :

This ring is a designer exclusive high-maintenance jewelry piece.
Pink gold (pink rhodium on 14k solid white gold) will wear off in
about one to two year of wearing making your ring look exquisite
vintage by exposing solid white gold base on the edges and flat
surfaces. Pink rhodium reapplication is not necessary, however if
desired, we provide two year (2 time) free pink rhodium
reapplication on all designer pink gold rings for all
ClassicEngagementRing customers. This service is available with
select jewelry manufacturers U.S. nationwide for a fee to
maintain pink rhodium color for your jewelry piece for continuous
wearing over it's lifetime"

They say right out front that it’s High Maintenance. That particular
ring, all the stones, including the black diamonds, are all
synthetics. With the others, those that have diamond melee, the
diamonds are real enough, but everything else is synthetics (cheap.)

That other page also has a couple interesting notes. Again, all are
CAD renderings, not photos, as Brian notes. Here, All the stones are
cubic zircona, even the colored ones. No synthetic corundum here. And
they just call it “black gold”, so could be black rhodium, or could
be that Legor ceramic coating that we were discussing a few days ago,
or something similar. I’d suggest the latter, because I note that a
fair number of the rings are not based on sterling silver under the
black, but are “titanium stainless steel”. Not sure what alloy that
would be, but I’m guessing it’s cheap…

The only other comment I’d have is to wonder… Do people actually
buy this junk? (yeah, and I know the answer. a bit depressing. But a
good use of CAD at any rate. Put together an entire line of inventory
and put it on a web page where all you need to have done before,
aside from the computer time, is figured out which chinese factory
you’ll contract with to produce the stuff for you and drop ship…

Peter

9

Apart from the fact that they are hideous, it’s always interesting
to read the ‘disclaimer’. Picking up on lack of grammar, syntax, and
hype is a red flag to me.

Dinah

10

They’re all CAD renderings. I’d be interested to see them in
reality, but the CAD images look pretty vulgar colour-wise in my
personal opinion.

Helen
UK