Know Your Jewelry

Where ever applicable, Style by Christiana incorporates gold-filled designs to enhance the beauty of its designed jewelry.

Gold-filled designs have the advantage of providing excellent long term wear durability of solid alloy gold products without the weight and higher costs. In most cases, a gold filled item can be repaired if damaged or badly scratched. Unlike gold electroplated products, the thicker cladding used on gold filled items can also be carefully re-polished several times without exposing the underlying base metal.

Most gold-filled products utilize an outer layer of gold that is between 10 karat and 18 karat in fineness. Depending on the usage, the thickness of the gold sheet varies. High wear items such as watch cases and cigarette lighters typically utilize a thickness ranging from 75 to 400 microns (ref. 1000 microns= 1 millimeter).

Eyeglass frames utilize gold-filled thicknesses between 15 to 30 microns. Thicknesses for high fashion jewelry, such as cuff link, bracelets, and money clips will range from 30 to 100 microns.

As thin as this may seem, the decorative show surface on many well executed gold filled items can last anywhere from 20 to 30 years! It is not unusual to observe reasonably intact gold filled surfaces on watches and vintage jewelry manufactured well over 75 years ago.