Black Hills Gold Jewelry

Black Hills gold jewelry is a popular type of jewelry design featuring grape clusters, leaves, and grapevines in precise detail. The design of Black Hills gold jewelry came from a French immigrant and goldsmith named Heri LeBeau, who brought French techniques for molding gold to America. His original creation was in the familiar shape of grapes and leaves, using rose, green, and yellow gold.Black Hill gold designs are available for bracelets, necklaces, earrings, bridal sets, men's and women's rings, ankle bracelets, and other pieces of jewelry. The distinctive multiple colors of Black Hills gold are created by mixing silver and copper alloys in with yellow gold. This produces green and red colored gold, respectively.By official definition, all Black Hills gold jewelry is made in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Because of the detail in the distinctive jewelry, production of Black Hill gold jewelry is a painstaking and time-consuming art. Each piece is constructed with a series of up to 40 steps. The total process can take experienced goldsmiths up to eight hours to create a single piece of Black Hills gold jewelry.Home to the largest mountains between the Rockies and the Alps, the Black Hills are located in sparsely populated country near the border of the United States and Canada. The discovery of gold in the Black Hills sparked a gold rush from 1875 to 1878, and gold has been steadily mined there ever since. Mount Rushmore and Custer State Park are popular tourist destinations in the area.