A brief history of rose gold

The soft tones of rose gold are a favourite for many jewellery lovers. Items like rose gold engagement rings are incredibly flexible, matching with almost any skin tone, and able to be adorned with almost any precious gem. Its blushed looked is almost what you’d imagine yellow gold would look like when embarrassed.

It’s a soft, subtle and sexy colour that is created by adding copper to gold. Because it is a ‘designed’ gold, just like white gold, it is more subject to changes in fashion, but in good news for rose gold lovers the metal is currently very much ‘in’. Walking down the street you’ll notice many engagement and wedding rings in Sydney are crafted from the metal, and jewellery stores currently offer up no shortage of choice when it comes to rose gold pieces.

But it hasn’t always been this way – rose gold engagement rings in the Sydney CBD haven’t always been the done thing. Indeed, rose gold hasn’t always been around. So where was this metal first forged? And how popular has it been up until this point?

To find out the answers to these questions and more, let’s look at a brief history of rose gold.

While the origins of rose gold are murky at best, the first recorded use of it was by 18th century jewellers. Decorative inlays were fashioned in quatre-couleur gold, which was made up of green-, white- and pink-tinted versions of the metal. The pink-tinted gold was created by mixing in copper at a ratio of 75% gold, 22.5% copper and 2.5% silver.

For the first century of its existence, this particularly small niche was the only one that rose gold was used to fill. It wasn’t until the late 19th century when rose gold got its big break.

Carl Fabergé wasn’t just any jeweller. In imperial Russia, he was jeweller to the Czars. Forever pushing the design envelope with his famous Fabergé eggs, the creations won him some very wealthy admirers. These ladies and gentlemen would often commission Fabergé to create a personal, one-of-a-kind piece.

His most expensive commission was the ‘Moscow Kremlin’ egg, ordered by Czar Nicholas II as a gift for his wife. In this egg Fabergé made lavish use of rose gold, and is credited with bringing the precious metal into the public consciousness.

A decade of excess, the 1920s saw an explosion of high-end jewellery design. This is the decade that rose gold truly came to public prominence, most notably through Jeweller Cartier’s lavish use of the metal in its 1920s designs. This boon couldn’t last forever though, and as the stock market crashed in 1929, so too did the demand for rose gold. Gold was seen as one of the last safe investments, and to adulterate it with copper was thought of as more than a little idiotic.

In the lead-up to World War II, there was a new player on the market – platinum was used to create white gold, which fit perfectly with the monochromatic and geometric influences of the Art Nouveau movement. But as the Second World War began, platinum became an important material for fighting forces and thus rose gold was once again thrust into the limelight.

In the decades since, rose gold has fluctuated in popularity. Highly prized at one point, unloved the next, it is as subject to the whim of fashion as any accessory. But with the rose gold iPhone coming out in recent years, you can rest assured that this unique metal won’t be going anywhere fast.