Not only gold and silver: this is why super-technological materials are increasingly used in jewelery ♦
Carbon fiber, titanium, nanoceramics, volcanic lava and even the rediscovery of aluminum: the use of new generation technology and materials in the world of jewelry is increasingly common. The reasons are different. A metal like titanium, for example, is durable and very light. Not only: the titanium can also take on different colors without having to glaze or plate it with some electroplating. On the other hand, it is very difficult to work: that’s why it is not easy to find a titanium jewel.
Titanium, in any case, is one of the materials that in recent years has become a symbol of research and innovation in jewelry. Masters like Wallace Chan, Suzanne Syz, or Maison like Giovanni Ferraris, or jewelery companies like Mattia Cielo from Vicenza, who after experimenting with titanium wires to enhance the flexibility of its products, have also focused on carbon. As well as another avant-garde designer, Fabio Salini: he also uses carbon fiber next to titanium.
Carbon also is used by the Austrian Maison Adler, which strongly believes in this ash gray material and has created an entire collection, called Eclipse, made up of microscopic woven carbon fibers, with a silky and slightly silver patina. The contrast of the dark background with colorless diamonds and white and pink gold give the jewelry an almost lunar appearance. The Swiss of Bogh-Art, on the other hand, use ultra-thin “sewn” titanium wires, that is compacted, with fiber optic beams at a precise temperature and pressure. The obtained layer is then cut to give shape to the wings and the petals of butterflies, dragonflies and flowers that make up rings and earrings. A way to make classic designs and frames more sparkling.
Another frontier of jewelry is the nanoceramic resin, the result of a mixture of water, butyl alcohol and the often methoxypropanol, it covers like a thin film rings, earrings and pendants from the Mistero collection by De Grisogono, with the advantage of making them unteachable. But it is also used by Roberto Demeglio, or by Vhernier, although in a different way. Finally, the technology can be used to work an ancient material like solidified volcanic lava, still not very widespread, but used by David Yurman, who transformed the debris of an eruption into pearls for a necklace with diamonds.
Another ancient material, but rediscovered thanks to the technology that transforms it, is aluminum. Processed and melted with refined methods that allow it to be colored, even aluminum has turned into a precious metal. Light, resistant, very malleable, it was chosen for example by a young avant-garde designer such as Emmanuel Tarpin, but also experimentally by Vhernier for some necklaces from the Calla collection. And also a Maison of high jewelery like the German Hemmerle proposes jewels like the anodized aluminum earrings with cavities in which aquamarines are inserted. Federico Graglia
