2 UnoAErre Aurea Italy 14K Yellow Gold Serpentine Chains 15" & 18" 2.5g

Description

Two vintage 14K / 585 (58.5% gold) yellow gold serpentine necklace chains with spring ring clasp, one just marked with gold content, the other marked Aurea Italy with the maker Uno-A-Erre.

UnoAErre was the first goldsmith company of Arezzo. The company was founded on March 15, 1926 by Leopoldo Gori and Carlo Zucchi, in the city of Arezzo, with the idea to apply industrial methodologies to goldsmithing, aiming to minimize the costs of metal work.

In the sixties production reached the highest levels, and the company employed more than 1200 staff. It began a reduction of its workforce in the early 1970s. Today fewer than 500 are employed. The company passed from the hands of families Gori-Zucchi to Morgenf Enfield (Deutsche Bank Group) in the mid 1990s, and was regained by Zucchi family with the help of a group of banks. Operations were subsequently moved to a new factory. In 2008, the company revisited its practices to manufacture items that are lighter and that contain less gold and expanded into the production of accessories, rather than just sticking to traditional jewelry.

Arezzo, the ancient Arretium, has always been the city of gold. It is the undisputed Italian jewelry capital and through time it has become one of the world’s jewelry capital.

The history of the precious metal manufacturing is linked to the history of Arezzo itself. Everything was born with the Etruscans, this very ancient population who were among the greatest gold masters of the past.

Between the IX and the I century B.C., in Etruria Goldsmithing was born thanks to the Etruscans, who had a very refined gold work technique called the granulation, which consists of reducing the metal into very small crumbs which are then soldered on a thin foil to shape jewels.

This technique, as everything which regards the Etruscan population, is still partly unknown but if we are in Arezzo we can see their extraordinary creations in the National Archeological Museum Gaio Cilnio Mecenate, in the National Medieval and Modern Art Museum and in the MAEC, the Etruscan Academy Museum in Cortona which definitely deserves a visit.

From the Etruscan onwards, in Arezzo gold has always been worked and grew with the birth of the flourishing gold shops in the Sixteenth century. The jewels, which were born here, arrived in the Renaissance courts of Florence and Rome. Then, on commission of the papacy, the production of religious jewels started.

In the Twentieth century, Arezzo transformed itself from a farming artisan city to an Industrial city and the gold industrial district, which counts more than one thousand companies nowadays, was born. The turning point happened in1926 when Carlo Zucchi and Leopoldo Gori created the UnoAerre, which leaves a permanent imprint on the Arezzo industrial reality.

Condition

Very Good

Dimensions

Chain Lengths - 18” & 15” / Combined Weight - 2.5 g