The unique beauty of 24 karat gold is a cornerstone of Gurhan’s designs.
Growing up in Turkey, Gurhan Orhan did not set out to be a jewelry designer. His early career was spent crafting specialized audio equipment, including amplifiers and speakers. A move to Switzerland to work in a watch repair shop brought him one step closer to his true passion: crafting jewelry of pure 24 karat gold.
While working at the shop, Gurhan experienced handling pure gold for the first time. “I immediately fell in love with pure gold,” he says, and it would become a love that would last a lifetime. “Some people showed me 18-karat gold that I could work with to make jewelry, but I said no, I will work with pure gold. At the beginning people didn’t like the idea, and were looking at me with suspicion,” but he persevered and taught himself how to make pure gold jewelry. “I wasn’t a jeweler before, so this is how I learned.”
A Quest for Beauty
The challenges of working with pure 24-karat gold are its expense and its weight, Gurhan says. Twenty-four 24-karat gold is much more expensive than 18-karat, and it’s a very heavy metal that is denser than lead. “The difference in weight between 18-karat [75% gold] and 24-karat [100% gold] is not just the 25% extra gold,” he explains. “In mass, it is almost 50% higher in weight.”
Twenty-four-karat gold has a disadvantage of being extremely soft, necessitating different stone-setting techniques. Instead of a typical prong setting “we make a kind of a jacket that’s wrapped around the stones,” Gurhan says. But its softness is also, in many cases, an advantage, he says, because the scratches that develop over time will enhance its beauty. “If you scratch pure gold, it makes it more sparkling, and it will get a lovely patina over time. That’s the really great look of 24-karat gold.”
Romancing the Stone
Gurhan sets his jewelry with a myriad of precious stones and more unusual objects, including dinosaur bones and antique miniature mosaics. His untraditional path towards designing jewelry combined with his spirit of curiosity has led to unexpected and delightful designs. All of Gurhan’s jewelry is handcrafted in his own factory, hand-hammered using tools reminiscent of the Anatolian and Byzantine eras. Because each piece of jewelry is handmade, no two will be exactly alike.
An Emotional Conncetion
Gurhan’s uniqueness extends to his identification of each stone, engraving the back of the setting with the stone’s description and carat weight. He also describes each stone’s emotional significance, or its “cosmic data” as he calls it, reflecting the centuries-old beliefs that stones have the power to heal, clear negative energy and bring good fortune. For example, paraiba tourmalines signify creativity, balance and personal power, while diamonds represent purity.
No two natural gemstones are exactly alike, which suits Gurhan just fine. “It’s so much fun playing with stones,” he says—and it shows.