Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim Presents “Silver Lining” – Diamonds, Gemstones and the Changing Role of Silver

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Three exhibitions are now on view at the Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim in Pforzheim, Germany. They remind us of what silver has done for jewelry — and what it is doing today — from giving diamonds a bright white setting centuries before platinum and white gold, to the globally sourced gem-set silver jewelry we see today.

Silver Lining
Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim, Germany
May 17, 2026 – January 6, 2027

Diamonds find a white metal

“Cool Brilliance — Highlights of the Jewellery Museum in Silver and Diamonds,” one of the Silver Lining exhibitions, looks at a time when jewelers had few choices if they wanted a white precious metal around their diamonds.

Before platinum could be readily worked (it needs a lot of heat), and before white gold existed (creating an alloy), jewelers had silver.

During the Baroque period (roughly 1600–1750) and Rococo period (roughly 1730–1770), diamonds became increasingly important in aristocratic European jewelry.

And diamond cutting was changing.

As cutters learned how to cut diamonds to better reflect and refract light, creating more brilliance, jewelers had another aesthetic consideration: What color metal should surround them?

Gold was certainly an option, and continued to be widely used. But silver offered something different — a white precious metal surrounding a colorless or near-colorless diamond.

As the Schmuckmuseum explains, the “cool brilliance” of diamonds could be brought to full effect by setting them in silver.

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Silver Topped

Jewelers also developed another clever solution: silver-topped gold. The visible portion surrounding the diamonds could be silver/white, while gold was used for the body or reverse of the jewel. Why gold on the back? Gold was more valuable, didn’t tarnish like silver, and was better suited for long contact with the wearer.

Silver wasn’t replacing gold. It simply gave jewelers a way to help their near colorless diamonds look, well, near colorless.

By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, advances in using platinum — followed by the development of white gold alloy — gave jewelers new white-metal choices for diamond jewelry.

It was during this period that silver’s role in fine diamond jewelry tarnished a bit.

But it certainly didn’t disappear.

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Silver, Coral, Amber, Amazonite and Lapis Lazuli

In another Silver Lining exhibition, “Afghanistan, Oman or the Black Forest?” Pforzheim takes us somewhere completely different.

We’re no longer looking at 18th or 19th century European silver-set diamond jewelry. We’re on a global search for silver jewelry, including gem-set silver jewels, that represent unique cultures.

The exhibition draws from the ethnographic collection assembled by Pforzheim jewelry collectors Eva and Peter Herion, who traveled extensively, particularly through Africa and Asia, acquiring jewelry over several decades. Their collection filled their home, with pieces displayed on the walls and smaller jewels kept in special drawers. They were collected and admired, but not worn.

Peter Herion brought a jeweler’s eye to their collecting. He was an entrepreneur, goldsmith and artist, and also photographed their travels.

The collection was originally placed with the Schmuckmuseum as a permanent loan, and subsequently became part of the museum’s holdings.

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The Schmuckmuseum supplied the Roskin Gem News Report with images of three pieces that show how silver was combined with gem materials in the collection.

A bracelet from Tiznit, Morocco, combines silver and lapis lazuli.

An elaborate necklace attributed to the Amazighs (Berbers) of southern Morocco combines silver with coral, amber, amazonite and textile material.

And a necklace from Iran, possibly associated with Qashqai nomads, combines silver and lapis lazuli.

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The exhibition puts silver jewelry’s history into a much larger perspective. The three gem-set pieces shown here date generally to the 20th century, but some of the earliest known silver finds date to the fifth millennium BC. That’s a long history of silver jewelry.

And Silver Today

The last of the three Silver Lining exhibitions is the “21st International Silver Triennial,” a competition featuring contemporary silver objects selected for both their artistic sophistication and technical craftsmanship.

The competition has been organized since 1965 by the Gesellschaft für Goldschmiedekunst and the Deutsches Goldschmiedehaus Hanau to promote contemporary silversmithing. Over the decades, exhibitions in Germany and abroad have turned it into an internationally recognized showcase for the metal.

Artist Uli Aigner is also represented with an installation from her ONE MILLION project.

Beginning October 17, during Pforzheim’s Museum Night, students from the Goldsmithing School Pforzheim will add their own work in “All White — Make New from Old.”

Another Silver Lining?

There is one more chapter to this story, and it is happening right now.

Silver never disappeared from jewelry. Even with the use of platinum and white gold, throughout the 20th century, silver remained an important material for jewelry designers and artists — from the Scandinavian silversmithing tradition to the American studio-jewelry movement.

But today’s precious-metal prices give silver another advantage.

For an independent designer, higher gold and platinum prices don’t simply mean a more expensive finished jewel. They also mean considerably more money tied up in metal before that jewel has been sold — in prototypes, inventory and pieces sitting in showcases.

Customers feel those higher metal prices too.

Silver offers another option: a precious white metal that allows designers to create diamond and colored gemstone jewelry at a more affordable price point — and perhaps put more of the available budget into the gemstone and the design.

Timing (and Price) Is Everything

There is no single “silver is back” moment. It never really left.

What has changed, though, are some of the reasons for choosing it.

Centuries ago, jewelers turned to silver when they wanted the whiteness of a precious metal around a diamond, and today’s familiar alternatives weren’t yet practical, or didn’t exist.

Today, platinum and white gold are readily available.

Yet silver can once again give designers — and their customers — another way to put diamonds and colored gemstones into a white precious metal.

The reasons have changed. But the silver lining remains.

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Silver Lining

Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim
Jahnstraße 42
75173 Pforzheim, Germany

May 17, 2026 – January 6, 2027
Hours: Wednesday through Sunday and holidays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The Silver Lining exhibitions include:
21st International Silver Triennial
Cool Brilliance — Highlights of the Jewellery Museum in Silver and Diamonds
Afghanistan, Oman or the Black Forest? — Silver Highlights from the Ethnographic Herion Collection

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