Rose Hip: The lasting allure of rose gold jewellery

gafencu rose gold jewellery

With spring subsiding into full on-summer sun, it’s the perfect time to review this season’s chicest hue – rose gold. This most alluring of alloys never fails to grant your skin the subtlest of blushes, ensuring you of a sun-kissed halo glow wherever you go. While, today, this unique pink shade is all the rage in haute joaillerie circles, it actually originally rose to fame some two centuries ago, largely on account of the influence Peter Carl Fabergé, that most renowned of Russian jewellers.

Image: Messika Paris Released Sun necklace; Chaumet Josephine Collection ring; Piaget Wings of Light ring; Suzanne Kalan Audrey ring; Selim Mouzannar Mina necklace; Daniela Villegas Chameleon ring; De Beers Enchanted Lotus ring

This innovative craftsman was the among the first to incorporate rose gold, at the time a somewhat novel material, into his designs, most notably in the shape of his iconic Fabergé eggs. So famous did these accessories become that the material initially came to fame as ‘Russian Gold’, before wider international use saw the current more general term adopted 

Image: Cartier Juste un Clou bracelet; Buccellati Aubade cocktail earrings; Ileana Makri Grass Seed ring; FRED ring; Repossi Antifer ring; Pomellato Fantine ring; Versace Trésor de la Mer choker

The actual colour of the material can vary from an orange-tinted yellow to a deep red depending on the ratio of yellow gold to copper, with an increased proportion of the latter bestowing more of a scarlet tinge to the alloy, Malleable to the extreme, it serves as the perfect counterpoint to a plethora of precious gemstones, as perfectly evidenced by both Piaget’s multi-hued Wings of Light ring and Versace’s ocean-inspired Trésor de la Mer necklace.