All is Not What It Seems

In a past post, I wrote about how the 1854 gold standard was lowered. As a result of this change in the amount of gold required for jewelry to be officially 'gold', gold items became easier to make. Before that govenment issue however, jewelers creatively developed a way to make gold jewelry appear to have more gold than it did:

The following is from this site:http://antiquesshop.org/victorianjewlery.htm

The Romantic period (1837-1860) in Victorian jewelry was sparked by the wedding of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1840. Since the supply of gold was inadequate at that time, thin sheets of gold were worked upon to impart the illusion of mass and size to the jewels of the early Romantic period.

It seems more research must be gathered in order to make a full understanding of what happened then. Time will tell!

Related Facts on Victorian Scottish Jewelry

As is already known, Scottish jewelry was popularized by Victoria (and Albert), during the Romantic Period (1837-1860). Here's some more of what I found out about that time:

Many times misidentified as 'Scotch topaz' or 'smoky topaz' the most popular gem in Scottish degined jewelry was caringorm. A black to brown to tea colored stone no longer found anywhere including the place it was mined: The Scottish Highlands (hence the name caringorm, from the mountain range). The gem is a variety of smoky quartz, it's color caused by irradiation of rock crystal with aluminum impurities.

Enameled bracelets patterned with family tartan colors and pins and pins were very popular Scottish jewelry pieces. A good deal of Scottish style jewelry was silver, though some were made using gold. Bloodstone, carnelian, moss agate and (as previously mentioned) caringorm and enamel were among the most common gems found in Scottish Victorian Jewelry.