I have a client who is interested in having some jewellery made out
of Welsh Gold.
I am looking for only 10 grams of 10kt of 14kt.
Does anyone know of a supplier for this material.
Thanks in advance
I have a client who is interested in having some jewellery made out of Welsh Gold.
I make a lot of Celtic design jewelry and generally serve an ethnic
clientele. Fairly frequently customers see rose gold in my cases and
say something like, “Oh! You have Welsh gold!” There is a fairly
prevalent folklore that rose gold comes from Wales. You also get a
similar response for mixed color golds that include rose gold, often
called “Black Hills Gold” which is of course a brand and a company
rather than the generic description of the combined colors.
There is gold that comes from deposits in Wales, but more than likely
your customer means rose gold (AKA pink or red gold). There is a lot
of competition for actual Welsh gold, but rose gold is a readily
available alloy. I would suggest you find out for sure if your
customer is looking for the color rather than the source before you
knock yourself out.
Steve Walker
Gold id still extracted in Wales and Scotland, but very much on a
small scale. There is no physical or chemical difference between
gold from there or any other place in the world, just an interesting
marketing angle from a company called Clogau Gold, who are not gold
miners but bought the name from a bankrupt 2 man mining operation.
100 years ago enough gold was taken from 1 Welsh mine alone to mint
33000 gold sovereigns in a year. Most of the London minted gold
coinage of the late 19th century used Welsh gold so it is not rare,
just impossible to determine. There is still a price premium on
Scottish or Welsh gold if made into jewellery but generally the
panners do it to recover enough gold to make their own wedding ring
and then stop as it doesnt really pay. I cast a couple of rings from
panned Welsh and Scottish gold for work colleagues but it took about
a month to acually get enough to do the job (they did the panning,
I’m not that kind or foolish). If you do buy some Welsh gold for your
client be very careful where you buy it for the reasons evident from
the above.
Nick Royall
I have a client who is interested in having some jewellery made out of Welsh Gold.
You might want to call Buckingham Palace. I heard on the news that
the only Welsh Gold remaining is reserved by the British royal family
for thier weddings rings, and that no one else can wear it.
Andre
the Royal family have their wedding rings made from Welsh gold but
this doesnt stop anyone else from doing the same. All you need to do
is get hold of some.
Nick Royall
the Royal family have their wedding rings made from Welsh gold but this doesnt stop anyone else from doing the same. All you need to do is get hold of some.
That’s the trick though. As soon as the Royals put their mark on it,
it becomes pretty much unaffordable.
Point in case Japanese box that the Royal coach is made of. Saw a
tiny piece of that wood (takes 40 years to grow big enough to use),
try and buy some… you’ll cry.
Regards Charles A.
the Royal family have their wedding rings made from Welsh gold but this doesnt stop anyone else from doing the same. All you need to do is get hold of some.
Statement from the Clogau Welsh Gold web site: “Due to the scarcity
of Welsh gold, only a touch is included within each piece of Clogau
Gold. This ensures the longevity of Welsh gold supplies, and the
affordability of the jewellery.”
Brilliant spin! They hardly have any, but they are willing to share
the few molecules they have left.
Using this logic, since most jewelers use recycled gold, which is
like a pool of material dipped from a river of tributaries that
inherits gold from many sources and back through time immemorial,
there is probably a few molecules of Welsh gold in anything any of us
makes. We just cannot give an actual account of how it got there,
which Clogau can and does.
I noticed that the examples of Welsh gold shown are red alloys,
which is consistent with the popular perception.
Steve Walker
Gone down this track before. In my experience gold is the same
whether it comes from South Africa, Scotland or Wales, so cannot be
identified. I am not sure if there is any gold coming out of the
mines in Wales. Clogau was the only one I new of and they only add a
touch of their precious gold to other gold. Have a look at their web
site it tells you all about it.
Hamish
the Royal family have their wedding rings made from Welsh gold but this doesnt stop anyone else from doing the same. All you need to do is get hold of some.
The gold for the royal family wedding rings comes from a different
mine to Clogau (Gwynffyndd) and for Diana’s wedding ring they
reopened the mine to dig enough just for that job.
There is enough copper and gold in wales to keep the world going for
many years but it is all in a National Park and small scale mining
wouldnt do it so tourism keeps the jobs and Snowdon stays the
tallest mountain in Wales rather than being a deep hole.
Nick Royall
One of my one time students, now a senior lecturer in metallurgy and
materials science at University College London panned enough gold to
make his own wedding ring and set about trying to determine if there
was anything special about Welsh gold. He analysed gold from all
over the world, both ancient and modern to look at the trace elements
(present in parts per million) to see if there was a fingerprint
that would tell you where the gold comes from. For some gold deposits
it is possible to tell but these days many refineries actually dope
their gold in the 0.01% bit that is not pure gold so you can tell the
source of the gold if reused. This was the case when identifying the
UKP 25million of stolen gold from the Brinks-Mat bullion robbery at
Heathrow Airport nearly 30 years ago. The stolen gold was identified
by a technique called Atomic Absorption Spectrofluorimetry which can
detect into the ppm range. The only more sensitive technique is
Isotope Dilution.
Anyway, there is nothing in Welsh gold that makes it special and
Clogau Gold were prosecuted for false advertising. They changed the
wording of their ads slighty and Stephen now has a database of gold
analyses that are referred to by archaeologists, criminologists etc
to see where a sample originated.
Nick Royall