“Black gold” is no longer solely a term for oil. It means exactly what it says, and if it sounds like an oxymoron, it actually reflects an appetite for subtlety and stealth in the jewellery market today. Where white gold used to be the default position for metal with an absence of colour, increasingly the plating has a darker hue, providing a more industrial, masculine counterpoint to rose gold.
Almost perversely, some designers enjoy plating on yellow gold. “It’s a private pleasure – only the purchaser knows what’s under there,” says London jeweller Hannah Martin, who has been working with blackened gold for five years and helped to popularise it.
