Pinchbeck (Gold-Imitation Alloy)
Pinchbeck is a copper-zinc alloy of the early eighteenth century, developed by the London clockmaker Christopher Pinchbeck - deceptively similar to gold in appearance, considerably cheaper, and in Georgian sentimental jewellery the dominant material of middle-class mourning and memorial pieces.
Written by Dr. Helene Vasall
Pinchbeck is one of the most important material inventions of the early industrialisation of jewellery. With the rise of a broader middle class in the eighteenth century, a gap in the market appeared: the desire for representative gold jewellery existed within that class, while the financial scope for real gold was limited. Christopher Pinchbeck, a clockmaker in Fleet Street, closed the gap with a copper-zinc alloy that looks deceptively like gold but costs only a fraction. In mourning and sentimental jewellery (see Sentimental Jewellery), pinchbeck became the dominant material of middle-class memorial pieces.
Material and properties
Pinchbeck is a copper-zinc alloy with the following properties:
- Composition: 80–85% copper + 15–20% zinc (depending on workshop and period)
- Density: around 8.4 g/cm³ - lighter than gold (15.6 g/cm³ at 18 ct)
- Melting point: around 950–1000 °C - somewhat higher than pure gold
- Colour: a warm golden yellow, slightly lighter or darker according to the zinc content
- Hardness: markedly harder than pure gold; worked in thin sheet, comparable to 14-carat gold
- Corrosion behaviour: prone to forming a patina; over the decades green to brownish surface tones develop
Pinchbeck is closely related to other copper-zinc alloys:
- Tombak (the German and French variant, with a somewhat higher zinc content)
- Similor (the French variant, with traces of silver)
- Mannheimer Gold (the German variant from the Mannheim goldsmithing school)
- Prince's Metal (an earlier English variant, before 1720)
- Mosaic gold (late 19th century, with a higher zinc content for a lighter colour)
History
Invention (around 1720). Christopher Pinchbeck (1670–1732) developed the alloy in his workshop in Fleet Street, London. At first he used it for watch cases - his main business - and then increasingly for jewellery too. After his death his son Edward Pinchbeck carried on the business; the trade name pinchbeck became a generic term.
The Georgian heyday (1720–1830, see The Georgian Era (1714–1837)). Pinchbeck became the standard material of the middle-class jewellery market in England. Sentimental pendants with a hollow setting for a lock of hair (see Hairwork), mourning rings with an inner engraving, small keepsake brooches - all executed in pinchbeck. French and German workshops adopted the technique and produced in parallel.
Early Victorian (1837–1860, see The Victorian Era (1837–1901)). Pinchbeck remained dominant in the mourning jewellery of the middle classes. The Whitby jet industry (see Whitby - Jet Workshops on the Yorkshire Coast) supplied the black material; the gold mount was often executed in pinchbeck to keep the pieces affordable.
Decline (from 1854). In 1854 the 9-carat gold alloy (375) was legally permitted in Britain - a markedly cheaper real gold that largely closed the market gap pinchbeck had filled. Workshops converted step by step to 9-carat gold; pinchbeck increasingly became a purely industrial material (costume jewellery, buttons, clasps) without a mourning context.
The late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Pinchbeck largely disappeared from the mourning-jewellery market. In the modern collectors' market the term is used above all for Georgian and early Victorian gold-imitation pieces.
Working the material
Pinchbeck is essentially worked like gold - its considerable hardness and comparable melting point permit almost all goldsmithing techniques.
Casting. Pinchbeck can be worked in sand moulds and by centrifugal casting - important for the mass production of small pendants and rings.
Raising and stamping. Embossed reliefs are made from thin pinchbeck sheet - above all for the fronts of mourning pendants with a weeping willow, urn or angel motif.
Engraving. Pinchbeck engraves well; inscriptions, initials and dates of death are executed much as on gold (see Engraving and Inscriptions).
Hollow settings. The typical Georgian hollow setting for locks of hair or miniature paintings works in pinchbeck just as it does in gold; the rock-crystal or glass insert is secured with the same claw technique.
Gilding (rolled gold). High-quality pinchbeck pieces were sometimes covered with a thin layer of gold (gold-plated pinchbeck) to prevent the formation of patina. Such pieces are hard to distinguish from genuine gold today.
Patina behaviour
One important property shapes the ageing of pinchbeck pieces: the high copper content leads to progressive oxidation. Over the decades three phases of patina develop:
- Early patina (5–20 years): slight darkening from golden yellow to a honey tone; visible only in the recesses
- Middle patina (20–80 years): a distinctly brown-green surface, above all on pieces not worn regularly
- Late-stage patina (80+ years): a dark brownish to green-blue surface, often patchily distributed
This patina is a reliable indicator of authenticity - modern imitations do not have it; very well-preserved antique pinchbeck pieces were mostly carefully looked after and develop a homogeneous matt-golden patina.
Mourning jewellery in pinchbeck
In a mourning context, pinchbeck is used above all for the following forms.
Sentimental pendants with a hollow setting for hair. The most common Georgian application. A pinchbeck pendant (1–2 cm in size) with a small rock-crystal window and, behind it, a lock of the deceased's hair - usually plaited into a swirl pattern or arranged as a small bundle of strands (see Hairwork).
Mourning rings with an inner engraving. Pinchbeck mourning rings (see Mourning Ring (Memorial Ring)) with an inscription engraved on the inside - a name, a date of death, a short motto.
Mourning lockets. Hinged pendants (see Mourning Locket) with a hollow setting for a portrait miniature or a hair plait, in a pinchbeck mount.
Mourning brooches with an inlaid onyx or black-enamel tablet and a pinchbeck border.
Mourning lapel pins (see Mourning Stickpin) with a black-enamel head and a pinchbeck stem.
Pinchbeck today
In the modern jewellery market, pinchbeck is no longer actively produced - modern gold imitations are mostly tombak (for costume jewellery) or gold-plated stainless steel (for higher-grade imitations). Pinchbeck exists only as an antiques category.
In the collectors' market, Georgian and early Victorian pinchbeck mourning pieces are increasingly appreciated:
- A simple pinchbeck mourning ring (Georgian, with a lock of hair): 200–600 €
- A pinchbeck pendant with a weeping-willow scene (miniature painting): 400–1,500 €
- A high-quality pinchbeck locket with pronounced goldsmith's work: 1,000–3,500 €
- Signed pinchbeck pieces (very rare, since they were not traditionally signed): 2,000–8,000 €
Pinchbeck jewellery is today also an ethical alternative to real gold for the bereaved who deliberately wish to avoid the ecological and ethical footprint of gold mining - antique pinchbeck pieces require no new extraction of material and carry a historical charge of their own as middle-class memorial jewellery.
Caring for antique pinchbeck pieces
Pinchbeck needs more care than real gold:
- Minimise contact with water - water accelerates oxidation, above all in combination with perspiration
- Store dry in airtight bags with anti-tarnish strips
- Clean only with a soft, dry cloth - chemical cleaners attack the surface, and ultrasound can loosen hollow settings
- Accept the patina as part of the value - the natural patina is part of the authenticity; aggressive cleaning destroys the historical character
- With hollow settings containing a lock of hair: never open them, never expose them to moisture; the historical hair substance is irreplaceable
Pinchbeck is a reminder that the material of a jewel is not always a direct mirror of its value - the emotional charge can far exceed the value of the material. Antique pinchbeck mourning pieces are among the most authentic testimonies to the middle-class culture of remembrance of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Questions about this entry
- How can pinchbeck be distinguished from real gold?
Several indicators. Weight: pinchbeck is lighter than 18-carat gold (density around 8.4 g/cm³ against 15.6 g/cm³ for 18 ct) - at the same size, a clearly perceptible difference. Magnetism: pinchbeck is not magnetic (as gold is not), but where iron impurities were present in cheaper pieces it can be slightly magnetic. Acid test: a drop of nitric acid turns pinchbeck green (copper oxidation) but produces no reaction on gold - this test damages the piece and should be carried out only by specialists. Patina: over the decades pinchbeck develops a dark to greenish surface; real gold stays a stable gold colour. Hallmarks: genuine gold pieces carry carat marks (375, 585, 750, 916), pinchbeck pieces do not.
- Was pinchbeck a forgery?
No, not in the modern sense. Christopher Pinchbeck marketed the alloy openly from the outset as a gold imitation - a high-quality alternative to gold that looks almost identical but costs considerably less. Only in the nineteenth century did some workshops begin to pass pinchbeck off as real gold - which is deception. Original eighteenth-century pinchbeck pieces are not a fraud but a material in their own right with an aesthetic tradition of their own. They are collectors' objects today, with their own auction prices.
- Why was pinchbeck so widespread in mourning jewellery?
For three reasons. Price: in the eighteenth century a pinchbeck mourning pendant cost around a tenth of a comparable gold piece - which made mourning jewellery accessible to a broader middle class for the first time (see The Middle Classes and Mourning Jewellery in the Nineteenth Century). Visual equivalence: a pinchbeck piece was indistinguishable from gold at first glance - which preserved social presentation at a time when mourning jewellery was worn in public. Sentimental value without material value: because the material value was minimal, the emotional value of remembrance stayed to the fore - pieces were not melted down but handed on across generations, because they posed no temptation to the melting pot. Paradoxically, more antique pinchbeck pieces survive today than comparable gold ones.
Further reading
- English Jewellery from the Fifth Century B.C. to 1800 - Joan Evans (1953)
- Sentimental Jewellery - Shire Library - Ann Louise Luthi (2007)
- Pinchbeck - A Forgotten English Alloy - Geoffrey Wills (1972)
Related entries
- Core conceptsMourning Jewellery
Mourning jewellery is body adornment that signals a death, binds the memory of a deceased person, or does both at once - since the 17th century a jewellery type in its own right, with a material language of its own.
- Core conceptsMemorial Jewellery
Memorial jewellery is jewellery that deliberately binds itself to one particular person - through an inscription, a photograph, hair, ashes or, the defining medium today, a digitally captured fingerprint.
- Core conceptsSentimental Jewellery
Sentimental jewellery is the jewellery of the age of sensibility between 1760 and 1840 - pieces in which love, friendship and grief share the same imagery, and in which hair, miniature painting and personal inscriptions first become the load-bearing form.
- MaterialsGold in Mourning Jewellery
Gold is historically the most dominant carrier material of mourning and memorial jewellery - usually in muted alloys, often contrasted with black enamel or as a restrained gold setting around a dark principal material such as jet, onyx or a plait of hair.
- MaterialsSilver in Mourning Jewellery
In the 19th century silver was the popular mourning carrier material of the bourgeois middle class and is today the most widespread material of modern memorial jewellery - cheaper than gold, more precise to engrave than stainless steel and with a long symbolic tradition as a material of purity and of memento mori iconography.
- Techniques & craftHairwork
Hairwork is the collective term for all techniques in which human hair becomes the carrier material of a piece of jewellery - from a single lock beneath rock crystal to finely plaited hair weaving in the Victorian showpiece manner.
- Techniques & craftEngraving and Inscriptions
Engraving is the oldest personalisation technique in memorial jewellery - from the Baroque memento mori ring to modern laser micro-engraving, which today inscribes initials, dates of death and even photographed handwriting into metal.
- Jewellery formsMourning Ring (Memorial Ring)
A mourning ring - also called a memorial ring - is a finger ring that carries the memory of a deceased person, usually in the form of an inscription, an image, a lock of hair or a fingerprint.
- Jewellery formsMourning Locket
The mourning locket is a pendant worn on a neck chain with an interior compartment - a concealed carrier of hair, photograph or inscription that keeps the memento close to the body and has been, from the eighteenth century to the present, the most important private form of mourning jewellery.
- PeriodsThe Georgian Era (1714–1837)
The Georgian era spans the reigns of the four kings George I to George IV and of William IV in Britain. In mourning jewellery it is the epoch in which sentimental jewellery was invented - sepia hair painting, the lover's eye, the miniature portrait on ivory, and the posy ring in transition to the memento mori ring.
- PeriodsThe Victorian Era (1837–1901)
The Victorian era is the heyday of mourning jewellery - a period of more than sixty years in which court mourning codes, industrial mass production, new materials (jet, vulcanite, Berlin iron) and Queen Victoria's personal widowhood combined to produce a system of public and private mourning visibility without precedent in European history.
- People & cultural historyThe Middle Classes and Mourning Jewellery in the Nineteenth Century
The rising middle classes of the nineteenth century were the principal bearers and principal consumers of the era's mourning and memorial jewellery - a social stratum that took over the aristocratic model of court mourning, gave it symbols and materials of its own, and in the course of industrialisation turned it into a mass market.