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Joshua Hendren

Contributing writer for Style by SCMP, specialising in jewellery, watches and pop culture


The price of gold has spiked in recent years and, as a result, the jewellery trade is quietly turning to other materials. Bronze, copper, titanium and aluminium are turning up in collections, whether from independent designers or established maisons, used not as substitutes for gold but for what they offer in their own right.
“Gold has gone astronomically expensive and thus it shifts again in its perception and wearability,” says British goldsmith Joy Bonfield-Colombara, founder of Joy BC, who is one of a number of makers exploring the potential of non-precious metals.

Independent jeweller Cora Sheibani has been working with bronze since the founding of her eponymous fine jewellery label in 2002. Her Circle ring, one of the first she ever designed, was inspired by an antique Roman ring she wore through her teens. “I wanted to make it in bronze and patinate it in different colours,” she says. The result fell short of what she had hoped as modern bronze, as she discovered, contains a small amount of silica to slow its chemical reactions, with the consequence that patinas remain largely superficial and wear away faster than they do on antique pieces.

Her Double Pot bracelets, meanwhile, were cast in bronze with mechanisms and screws in red gold, using bronze’s lightness to allow larger, sculptural forms that would be too heavy in solid gold. Unlike her experiments with rings, the bronze on the bracelets does not discolour the skin or react with the elements. “It made me realise how intelligently the Romans understood this material centuries ago, and how much more bronze deserves a place in contemporary jewellery today,” she says.
For Bonfield-Colombara, bronze is the medium through which Japanese and European craft traditions meet. She first encountered Japanese metal patination as a student at the Glasgow School of Art, on a 2012 placement in the country under a master who taught her to make a Damascus steel knife. He showed her an Edo-period katana decorated with insects in bone, wood, coral and bronze.

“There was a smaller knife concealed in the sheath, with an intricate centipede made of bronze and copper that had a deep brown and red tone,” she says. “That was where I first asked about this technique of metal coloration.”
Years later, on a Royal College of Art fellowship at Kyoto’s oldest art school, she returned to the metal. The Gaze series, made in 2023 for a Kyotographie festival exhibition with the photographer Olivia Rose, is the result. Two bronze brooches, later extended into rings, draw on the 18th century European tradition of lovers’ eye jewellery. One uses an Eastern patina with hazel diamonds, the other a verdigris finish, more associated with classical Italian and Greek sculpture.

The chemistry, Bonfield-Colombara explains, comes from heat and chosen ingredients reacting with the surface atoms of the alloy, with the resulting layers sealed with waxes for lustre and longevity. “The process becomes a part of the metal itself,” she says.
“I love playing with material perceptions and challenging silly hierarchies of marketed value systems,” she adds. “Copper is a gorgeous material with a rich pink colour. Gold and copper are the only actual coloured metals – yellow and pink. Everything else is white or grey. Silver is really undervalued in my opinion.”
A member of the Strong & Precious Art Foundation, which represents Ukrainian jewellery designers, Inesa Kovalova began experimenting with titanium during her master’s at Central Saint Martins in London between 2017 and 2019. “Titanium and gold have nothing in common at the bench,” she says. “It is meaningless to use the same approach. They have different material qualities and need different tools.”

Kovalova works instead with selective laser sintering, a 3D printing technology in which titanium powder is fused to a digital model, a technique that allows for intricate forms impossible to achieve with traditional goldsmithing.
Her Eclipse clips and Memoir brooch, for example, use titanium in its natural grey, trimmed with white diamonds. “I am not interested in imitating traditional jewellery finishes,” she says. “On the contrary, I see beauty in its natural finish and colour. I use titanium almost as it is, with a minor surface finish. It gives me an incredible sense of contrast against precious materials, and this works perfectly for my visual language.”

At a high jewellery level, Munich house Hemmerle has been working with unorthodox materials for decades. Founded in 1893 and now run by the fourth generation, the house began combining precious stones with iron, bronze, copper and aluminium in the 1990s, when Stefan Hemmerle set a diamond into a band of iron at the request of a client who preferred 19th century Berlin iron jewellery to gold. Today, Hemmerle produces around 200 pieces a year from its Munich atelier, pairing gemstones with copper, aluminium, wood and even concrete.

Italian maison Vhernier has also included aluminium in its Ardis high jewellery collection, presented in Paris last year, where it matched the pearlescent metal with white gold ribbing and pavé diamonds on a ring set with 135 diamonds, paired with a matching necklace.
“All materials come with a language and history,” Bonfield-Colombara points out. “It should be about the artistry of the way in which the material has been used and presented that makes it interesting or valuable.”


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High Jewellery

Why Vhernier and Hemmerle are turning from gold to bronze, copper and aluminium

Flow earrings in titanium and 14k palladium gold, set with diamonds, blue sapphires and a pearl, by Inesa Kovalova. Photo: Handout

Gaze (Hazel) ring in bronze, recycled 925 silver and natural diamonds, by Joy BC. Photo: Handout

Pottering Around bracelet in bronze, set with dumortierite and Palmeira citrine, by Cora Sheibani. Photo: Handout

Cora Sheibani Pottering Around bracelet in bronze, set with Swiss pebbles, quartz and smoky quartz. Photo: Handout

Hypatia (Small Green) pendant in bronze, by Joy BC. Photo: Handout

Eclipse clips in titanium and 18k palladium white gold, set with diamonds, by Inesa Kovalova. Photo: Handout

Hemmerle bangle in bronze and white gold with diamonds. Photo: Handout

Ardis high jewellery ring in aluminium and pavé diamonds, by Vhernier. Photo: Handout

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Chaumet Jewels by Nature collection. Photo: Handout

Buccellati Mosaico bracelet. Photo: Handout

1944 Cadenas watch, on display at the “Welcome to Van Cleef & Arpels’ World” exhibition. Photo: Handout

Clash De Cartier earrings. Photo: Handout

Hong Kong jewellery artist Wallace Chan brings his ‘Vessels of Other Worlds’ exhibition from Venice to Shanghai

The eight-metre Growth sculpture by Hong Kong-based artist Wallace Chan, on display at a preview at the Long Museum in Shanghai. Photo: Handout

Wallace Chan stands inside the Growth sculpture, which is part of the “Vessels of Other Worlds” exhibition at the Long Museum in Shanghai. Photo: Handout

An installation view of Wallace Chan’s “Vessels of Other Worlds” exhibition in Venice. Photo: Federico Sutera

Wallace Chan’s Rebirth sculpture, on display at the Long Museum in Shanghai. Photo: Handout

Wallace Chan’s Before Birth art piece from the “Vessels of Other Worlds” exhibition on display in Shanghai. Photo: Handout

The Birth sculpture by Wallace Chan from the “Vessels of Other Worlds” exhibition on display in Shanghai. Photo: Handout

Wallace Chan stands by the seven-metre Birth sculpture. Photo: Handout

Wallace Chan’s works from “Totem”, his 2022 Venice Biennale exhibition, are also on display at the Long Museum in Shanghai. Photo: Handout

Wallace Chan next to the 10-metre Rebirth sculpture. Photo: Handout

The return of jewelled hairpieces, boasting fans like Lisa from Blackpink and Megan Thee Stallion

Blackpink’s Lisa was pretty in pink and a Y2K-inflected updo, accessorised with jewellery including tiny lotus flower hair embellishments, at the premiere of The White Lotus season three in Bangkok last year. Photo: EPA-EFE

Dior Haute Joalliere’s Diorissima Collection. Photo: Anack Lejart

Megan Thee Stallion was regal in hair jewels at last year’s Met Gala in New York. Photo: GC Images

Zoë Kravitz at the Golden Globes. Photo: Penske Media/Getty Images

Simone Rocha fall/winter 2026. Photo: Handout

Fascinating Egypt hair clip by Van Cleef & Arpels. Photo: Handout

The Floris Pin by Kinraden. Photo: Handout

Boucheron, Cartier and Bulgari: the most exquisite high jewellery rings this season

Boucheron 2026 Carte Blanche high jewellery Flower ring. Photo: Handout

Cartier Le Choeur des Pierres high jewellery Kinko ring and Auralis ring. Photo: Handout

Cartier Le Choeur des Pierres Amberis ring and Keona ring. Photo: Handout

Tiffany & Co. Bird on a Rock aquamarine and chrysoprase ring. Photo: Handout

Bulgari Serpenti high jewellery ring. Photo: Handout

Gucci Flora high jewellery ring. Photo: Handout

Chanel Symbole Camélia Rose high jewellery ring. Photo: Handout

Piaget high jewellery ring with spessartite and tiger’s eye. Photo: Handout

Torque jewellery refined, from Cartier to Hong Kong’s Chantel Shafie

Chantel Shafie Ravello Torque with emerald-cut diamond. Photo: Handout

T by Tiffany collection from Tiffany & Co. Photo: Handout

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Valentina Fine Jewellery pink sapphire torque. Photo: Handout

Chantel Shafie Ravello ring. Photo: Handout

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Designers like Cora Sheibani, Joy Bonfield-Colombara and Inesa Kovalova are exploring the properties and potential of various metals


Designers like Cora Sheibani, Joy Bonfield-Colombara and Inesa Kovalova are exploring the properties and potential of various metals.


Why Vhernier and Hemmerle are turning from gold to bronze, copper and aluminium

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Designers like Cora Sheibani, Joy Bonfield-Colombara and Inesa Kovalova are exploring the properties and potential of various metals

Designers like Cora Sheibani, Joy Bonfield-Colombara and Inesa Kovalova are exploring the properties and potential of various metals