24K Gold
The metal behind every GURHAN design.
My journey began the moment I touched a sheet of pure gold. It was like love at first sight. The energy that came from it was overwhelming. It changed my life.
24K gold is pure gold. One hundred percent, with nothing added. Pure gold has a presence unlike other metals. It is warmer to the touch, heavier than it looks, and richer in color than any alloy can produce. You feel the difference the moment you hold it.
Gold is older than the Earth itself. It was formed in rare cosmic events long before our planet took shape, then folded into the ground as the world cooled.
When Gurhan Orhan first held a sheet of 24K gold in Istanbul's Grand Bazaar in 1994, he was holding a material older than the city around him. He decided in that moment to build his life around it. This is the metal every GURHAN design begins with.
What “Pure”
Actually Means
Gold jewelry is measured in karats. Each karat is one part out of twenty-four. An 18K piece is eighteen parts gold and six parts other metals, usually copper or silver, added to make the gold harder to shape. 14K is a little more than half gold. Each step down the ladder means less gold and more of something else. 24K gold is the only karat with nothing else in it. It is gold, in its purest form.
The Color
You Recognize
24K gold has a specific yellow. Deeper, warmer, more alive than any alloy can copy. It is the color Byzantine artists laid behind their saints, the color Egyptian jewelers pressed onto sarcophagi, the color that has stood for the sacred in cultures with nothing else in common. The eye recognizes it before the mind names it.
Because nothing is added, nothing needs finishing. 24K gold arrives from the bench as itself. No plating, no wash, no coating to wear thin.
From the start, it was my vision to reincarnate the craft of ancient goldsmiths by using the same pure gold that they used and by staying true to their hand-hewn techniques.
How It Feels to Wear
24K gold is heavier than most jewelry wearers expect. It warms to body temperature within seconds. It does not react with perfume, chlorine, or seawater, because there is nothing in it that can react. The same holds for skin. Allergies and green marks belong to the alloys mixed into gold, not to gold. Nothing here transfers, at the finger, the wrist, or the neckline.
Time treats it gently. No plating to wear through, no alloy to fatigue. Cleaning is simple and we take care of it, along with anything else a piece needs across a lifetime. The original shine comes back whenever you want it. 24K gold does not wear out.
What People Get Wrong
About 24K Gold
Three ideas about pure gold have kept it out of most Western fine jewelry. All three are worth answering directly.
“It's too soft.” Pure gold is more malleable than alloyed gold, but softness is not fragility. Ancient goldsmiths worked in pure gold for thousands of years, and their pieces still exist. What 24K gold asks for is the right technique. Hand-hammering strengthens the surface and gives the metal its structure. Internal supports, developed by Anatolian goldsmiths in the Byzantine period, hold hollow forms in shape. Done properly, 24K gold is built to last a lifetime.
“It's too yellow.” The color of 24K gold is the color pure gold actually is. Alloys look paler because they contain less gold. What some people call “too yellow” is what every culture that has treasured gold for millennia has called beautiful.
“It's too expensive.” 24K gold costs more because there is more gold in it. In a lower karat, part of what you pay for is the alloy standing in for gold. Priced by the gram of actual gold, 24K is not an extravagance. It is the honest number.
I watch each creation come to life as I hammer it by hand. Knowing that it will continue that life being worn by someone who values the noble tradition of hand craftsmanship is my reward.
A Metal to Pass On
More than 1,000 hammer strikes to every square inch of the finished surface. Every one of them placed by hand in our Istanbul atelier.
Because 24K gold is pure, its value is easy to understand. It is quoted every day on global markets. Cultures that treat gold as inheritance have always chosen the highest karat available, and for good reason: the piece is beautiful to wear and holds its worth at the same time.
Every gram in a GURHAN piece is responsibly sourced from a refinery committed to recycled gold. The core of every design is 24K. Where a piece has to survive daily handling, at the clasp, the earring post, the hook, the gold is 22K for strength, then plated in 24K so the surface and the essence of the design never break character. It is the one concession the material asks for, and it is made in gold.