A Brief Introduction To Italian Gold
Sunday, July 25th, 2010The Italians have a long history of toiling with gold. The Romans invented new procedures for extracting gold on mass utilizing hydraulic mining procedures, especially in Spain from 25 BC onwards and in Romania from 150 AD onwards. One of their biggest mines was at Las Medulas in Len (Spain), where seven long aqueducts enabled them to sluice most of a large alluvial deposit.
In Italy, the gold industry is very large and it significantly contributes to the country’s economy. Italy processes and utilizes approximately five hundred tons of fine gold every year in addition to copper and silver. Over forty thousand people are employed in the Italian gold sector.
Most of the 10,000 companies that comprise the Italian gold sector are concentrated in the following five regions of Italy, making them well known particularly for gold all around the world. They are Veneto, Tuscany, Piedmont, Lombardy, Campania.
Italian people are proud of their gold traditions and this is no doubt why they maintain traditional designs and techniques. They also use modern styles and demands and have many Goldsmith design schools available to teach young people.
There is a fast or steep increase in the cost of gold around the world and people are investing heavily in gold in all countries of the world. Consumers in Italy do not suffer as their counterparts in other countries do since Italian goldsmiths have the experience of utilizing new techniques and procedures as they produce gold products. The goldsmiths also use less gold content when manufacturing gold products and use new metal bases. This leads to the production of quality and strong gold products that fit snuggly into people’s pockets.
Because of the softness of pure (24k) gold, it is generally alloyed with base metals for combining in jewelry, altering its hardness and ductility, melting point, color and other capabilities. Alloys with lower caratage, generally 22k, 18k, 14k or 10k, possess higher proportions of copper, or other base metals or silver or palladium in the alloy.
The base metal most commonly utilized and that produces a redder color is Copper. It is possible to find 18-carat gold that is composed of twenty-five percent copper in Russian and old-fashioned jewelry. This jewelry has a unmistakable, although not very noticeable copper cast that makes rose gold. The 14-carat gold alloy appears almost identical to some bronze alloys in terms of color and these alloys are good for making all sorts of badges especially police badges.
It is possible to make blue gold by bonding it with iron and the blending of aluminum together with gold produces purple gold. However, this only happens when making specialized jewelry. Blue gold breaks easily and it is thus hard to make jewelry from blue gold.
Fourteen and eighteen carat gold alloys with silver only look greenish-yellow and are called green gold. White gold alloys can be produced with palladium or nickel.
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