A Buyer's Guide to Jewellery

Terms, Precious Metals and Spotting Fakes

A Guide to Jewellery Metals
Yellow Gold, 9 carat pure or plate
A soft metal, in a pale gold colour which looks good on honey, olive, brown or black skin, and fair skins (natural or tanned) with dark or blonde hair without looking 'brassy'. Doesn't really work with the more yellow Far Eastern skintones. Used extensively for plating base metal jewellery components, but wears away over time, so 9 carat plated jewellery is best for fashion jewellery or pieces that won't be worn very often. Solid 9 carat gold is popular for rings, as over time it moulds to the wearer's finger.

Yellow Gold 14/18/24 carat pure or plate
A more pure gold, with a distinct, strong colour. Best on olive, Asian and black skin, it can be striking and exotic on fair skin with very dark red/brunette/black hair. Avoid on tanned fair skin with fair hair - it'll look cheap, however much you spend! These are more pure grades of gold, and therefore harder and more hard wearing. They are used for plating gold-filled and vermeil jewellery components (see below).

Gold-Filled is heavy 14 or 18 carat gold plate over solid brass or bronze and this grade is often referred to as 'lifetime jewellery', as the plate is hard enough not to wear away with repeated use. When fashionable outfit-matching 'costume jewellery' became popular in the 1920s, many designers used this grade of gold as 'throwaway', but the quality has stood the test of time; many vintage pieces from this era can be found in old jewellery boxes, as wearable as the day they were made!

Vermeil or Silver Gilt became much-used in the 18th Century and onwards. Being heavy gold plate over sterling silver, it was particularly hardwearing and used extensively for grand tablewear - pure gold tended to dent easily. Nowadays it's used in jewellery for fine ornate or complex jewellery components - the silver 'holds' the form under the gold plating despite regular use.

White Gold, all carats and plated
Unsurprisingly, a very white metallic colour, which, unlike silver, doesn't fight with very fair, Nordic colouring - pale skin and blonde or red hair. Striking on olive, Asian and black skin.

Rose Gold, all carats and plated
A pale coppery colour.

Silver, pure or plate
A clear yet warm colour which ages well over time. The pure silver standard is 925 silver (92.5% pure), and is generally hallmarked unless on very small pieces like earring components. Purer grades are available - see below.

New silver suits fair, honey and olive skin with light and mid-brown, red or dark/black hair, and asian or black skin, but looks insipid on blondes with fair skin. Old silver has a patina - a slightly warm 'bloom' - which will suit darker blondes, or full blondes with honey or olive skin.

Bali Silver
97-98% pure silver.

Karen Silver or Thai Hill Tribe Silver
97-98% pure silver.

Alpaca Silver
Peruvian 'alpaca' silver is an alloy of zinc, iron and nickel. Consequently, it is very shiny and hardwearing, bearing similar properties to stainless steel. The addition of iron means it is an extremely stable alloy, and therefore described as hypo-allergenic - wearable by all except the most nickel sensitive.

Niobium is a soft, pure metal that is only found and extracted from its mineral compounds, such as columbite. It is a silver-grey colour, and like titanium, can be anodized to create various metallic colours. Being extremely stable when cool, it falls under the category of metals that are hypo-allergenic.

Platinum/Rhodium, pure or plate
Hard silver-coloured metals that don't tarnish easily, looking best on fair/honey skin with dark red/dark hair, and olive, Asian and black skins.

Copper
Works beautifully with fair skin and mid or dark brown hair which has reddish elements. Striking with fair skin and black hair, awful with Far Eastern skin or any shade of red hair, but great with brown or black skin. Works with strawberry blondes who have green, hazel or brown eyes.

Pewter
A shiny silver-coloured amalgam of tin, copper and antimony, particularly popular for historical reproductions as it darkens. Suits most colourings, but can be overpowering on blondes with fair skin.

Murano Glass Fakes - Avoiding the Cheats

The superb quality of glass from the Venetian island of Murano has been prized since before the Renaissance. In the fingers, it is so smooth, it's rather like silk, and has the same 'warm' quality, which you don't really expect from glass!

If you're buying Murano glass jewellery online, your easiest guide is the price - type 'Murano' into any auction site and you'll get heaps of results. We all love to get high-quality at a good price, but you're not going to get a pair of genuine Murano glass earrings for a fiver ($10 ish), or a genuine Murano glass heart pendant for less than £30 ($60ish).

The online market is flooded with lower-quality glass from the Far East, India and South America, which looks like Murano in the pictures ... but how close up are they? Real Murano has a quality which allows the light to pass right through with a pure, water-like clarity, and a jeweller using it will make sure you can see it, even with the limited graphics of the web.

So your second guide is the seller or designer themselves - look around their site or online shop - if they have clear, extensive descriptions and good pictures, along with a good background like guarantees and reviews, you can be pretty sure you're getting the genuine article!

The most popular Murano is foiled - a glass core, encased with gold, silver or copper (old gold in appearance) foil, and then overlaid with coloured glass. This can be quite convincingly reproduced by the fakers with aluminium foil, and amalgams of precious metals, but the end result is evident - once overlaid with glass, these imitations, although attractive, lack the lustre and sparkle provided by the clear glass overlay of the real thing.

The television shopping channel QVC has contributed enormously in helping people spot the rubbish by featuring real Murano glass from jewellery designers who source their glass direct from Murano, and their prices should be used as your own base price guideline. Obviously QVC are a huge company, with enormous buying power, so different pieces by individual designers will plane upwards in price.