Solid 10K Two Tone Gold Openwork Diamond Cut Rose Heart Dangle Drop Earrings

Solid 10K two tone gold heart drop earrings with a rose gold rose, marked 10K on the ear wires and on the backs. Each heart is an open frame rather than a solid plate, its interior filled with a row of slender vertical bars that leave the design mostly air. Those bars and the frame itself are diamond cut, meaning facets have been cut into the gold with an abrasive wheel so the metal throws hard points of light the way a faceted stone does. A fully modeled rose sits at the center in rose gold, raised above the plane of the heart, with yellow gold leaves and a stem running beneath it. They hang from French wires.

The two tone treatment is doing the work that a stone would do in another design. A rose carved in the same yellow gold as its surroundings would disappear into the openwork, because everything behind it is also gold and also catching light. Rendering it in rose separates it instantly, and because rose gold takes its color from copper alloyed through the metal rather than from any surface treatment, that contrast is permanent at every angle and under every light.

French wires, which let the hearts swing freely and turn as the wearer moves, so the diamond cut faces are constantly changing which way they face the light.

Verifications:
Solid 10K gold has been verified using an Auracle Gold Analyzer.

Details:
Metal: Solid 10K Two Tone Gold
Gold Colors: Yellow and Rose
Hallmarks: 10K on the ear wires and the backs
Design: Openwork heart with applied rose and leaves
Finish: Diamond cut
Earring Style: Dangle Drop
Closure: French Wire
Condition: Excellent estate condition

Fun Facts:
Diamond cutting is exactly what the name says, applied to metal instead of stone. A wheel tipped with diamond abrasive spins at high speed and shaves precise flat facets into the surface of the gold, each one angled to throw light in a different direction. The technique turns a piece with no gemstones in it into something that genuinely sparkles, and it works for the same optical reason a cut gem does: many small flat faces pointed different ways means that whichever way you move, several of them are aimed at a light source.
Rose gold gets its color from copper, and the ratio is the whole recipe. Pure gold is yellow and copper is red, so alloying the two shifts the result toward pink in direct proportion to how much copper goes in. The important consequence for a piece like this is that the color is the metal rather than a coating on it. It runs through the full thickness of the rose, cannot be worn through at the high points, and will look the same in fifty years as it does now.