FASHION | recently heard a story from a friend at the District Attorney's office who had a case where a man involved in a scuffle was shot in the tooth. The man survived, almost injury-free except for a busted lip. It tums out that the man was wearing a grill over his teeth. Gold caps saved this man's life. When I heard this story though, after | recov- ered from the initial humor of the image, | realized this fortunate man must have had fake gold in his mouth. Genu. ine gold is soft and pliable- it certainly couldn't stop a bullet. The man must have been wearing gold-plated steel, luckily for him, Gold has long been the precious metal of the world. Its rare, itis virtually impervious to corrosion (which is why sunken treasure from centuries ago is brought up from the seabed in almost its original condition), and its softness gives jewelers a wide range of possibiliies for techniques. Silver, which oxidizes and corrodes, is more plentiful and harder to work with, and has never had the same value as gold. Platinum was discovered much later, only 500 years ago, and only began to be used a precious metal for jewelry around 1900. As the story of the man with the fake gold gril indicates, there are more useful properties of metal than just its per- ceived worth. Sometimes, strength is a great advantage. And so some jewelers are starting to experiment with a new metal, titanium, whose ease of use has been rapidly expanding in recent years. The market for precious metals has gone, in many jewelers’ eyes, out of control, with gold reaching seemingly impossible now highs recent- ly, after quadrupling in price in only afew years. This makes it much harder for jewelers to work with gold, so while some are turning back to silver, others are trying new things. Titanium was first used for jewelry in the seventies, when an unstable economy drove up precious metal prices, and art schoo/-trained jewelry designers sought creative alternatives in this newly available metal. It was then largely forgotten in the jewelry world and developed more for high-tech industries, where its inherent strength and lightness gave it distinct advantages. Titanium is the strongest metal on earth, and is half the weight of steel. When Frank Gehry employed the material for his striking design for the Guggenheim at Bilbao a few years ago, the metal became the focus of new design techniques. tis only now that there are jewelry producers with enough savoir faire to manufacture complex pieces of jewelry from the metal. ‘The past several years have seen the emergence of titanium wedding bands, but now more complex jewelry tech: niques are being employed with the metal. Stone setting and intricate constructions are possible with the use of CAD production, which led to the creation of Solange Azagury Partridge’s latest collection (commissioned by Ameri- ‘can Express in honor of their new Titanium card). It represents the biggest step forward yet for the use of the metal in precious jewelry. The lightness of the metal allows for sizable constructions that would have been impossible to wear had they been made from any of the traditional precious metals. The rainbow stones represent the many color possibilities of titanium, which emerge with heat. It seems that in the near future, we may see these rainbow colors become a new element in precious jewelry. by Laura Rysman