Palladium, the other white metal
This is a design I did for a recent customer. 
This guy came to me with an opal that he had gotten in Australia that he wanted to mount in either a ring or a pendant for his wife. He really wanted the piece made out of platinum because he had always bought his wife platinum pieces before. The problem was that he had a pretty low price that he wanted to hit and platinum is SUPER expensive right now. I suggested using palladium instead of platinum. It looks like platinum in that it is a white metal, and it is actually in the platinum metal family, but it is a fraction of the price.
He wasn’t really sure about using a different metal but he trusted my advice and decided to give it a try. The piece I designed for him was super simple without a lot of embellishment in order to keep labor costs down but it really highlighted his stone. I used heavy prongs to give the piece a little added style and since we were using palladium the added weight wasn’t a big added cost.
I think the piece turned out really well and he was very happy when he picked it up.
He did insist on a platinum chain.
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