I. Napoleon's faux pas 

“It’s 150 years since we’ve had the periodic table 

and we still don’t know where a good number of elements come from.”¹

Towards the end of the 1700s, in a laboratory in Madrid commissioned and funded by Charles III of Spain, an enraged Pierre François Chabaneau - overcome by fits of emotion befitting only of a French rococo-era chemist - was smashing flasks, jars, and beakers, hurling scientific equipment out of his window, reducing King Charles’s world-first bespoke platinum lab to a fine powder and exclaiming “I’ll smash the whole business! You’ll never again get me touch the damned metal!”²

The history of platinum is as such: one of bafflement, error, and frustration. The name itself is testimony to this: it derives from the mistaken assumption of Spanish expeditioneers that the metal (platina) was in fact an impure form of silver (plata), hence ‘plata’, plus the diminutive suffix ‘-ina’.³ And although the story of platinum is, to begin with, a Spanish one, its evolution is very much a French affair...

Platina entered European study upon its discovery in the Rio (river) Pinto in Spanish Colombia. Around the 1730s it was brought to Europe by the illustrious scientists and naval officers Jorge Juan y Santacilia and Antonio de Ulloa, the latter of whom was the first to attempt a scientific study of it.⁴ 

Despite his violent outburst, Chabaneau did in fact succeed in producing the first ever cube of pure platinum.⁵ A fleeting “Platinum Age” then took hold in Spain. The King ordered Chabaneau’s process to be kept secret and a handful of individuals became very wealthy selling platinum snuff boxes, spoons, watch chains and buttons “of the most rare beauty”.⁶

Chabaneau’s crowning achievement was a pure platinum chalice presented on behalf of (the recently deceased) Charles III to the Pope in 1789, bearing the inscription…

Charles III, King of Spain and the Indies,  

gives as a gift the first fruit of platinum  

made malleable by Francisco Chavaneau to Pius VI, 

Supreme Pontiff of all the World ⁷ 

But the King’s successor - Carlos IV - let things slide somewhat towards the turn of the century and Napoleon invaded Spain. He occupied Madrid, the lab was destroyed (again), and the flame of the “Spanish Platinum Age” went out, a mere 20-or-so years after it had begun.⁸ 

An unintended side effect of Napoleon's invasion was that the King's secret - Chabaneau’s process - was, for the time being, lost...⁹ 

II. We're gonna need a bigger forge... 

"Most elements lighter than iron are forged in the cores of stars…" ¹⁰ 

But stars are not capable of producing many of the metals on the periodic table. 

Gold, platinum, and others heavier than iron need a much bigger cooker…¹¹ 

Or two much bigger cookers…

200 years after Napoleon's invasion of Spain, a great flash of light was detected in deep space approximately 130 million light years away. So massive was the blast that produced it that space-time itself shook. ¹²

In 2017 these shock waves were felt in the USA and Italy by Earth’s two gravitational-wave observatories - LIGO and Virgo.¹³

The JWST telescope, in 2023, showed that another similar flash (a "kilonova") contained signatures of heavy metals.¹⁴ The blast of this kilonova produced a quantity of gold “equivalent to several times the mass of the Earth”.¹⁵ 

So what caused these blasts and flashes?  

When a massive star gets old, it is unable to fight against the force of gravity pulling it inwards towards its core. Old and tired, it collapses under its own weight. Gravity crushes it into a small, dark, and incredibly dense neutron star. 

A neutron star might be slightly larger than a quaint English rural parish like Knutsford (10-20 km across)...  

1. Artist's representation of an English town full of golf balls... 
2. AI-extrapolated image based on NASA's data on neutron star collisions
   

Scientists now believe that such events are necessary in order to account for the quantity of heavy metals in our universe.¹⁷  One might therefore be tempted to clumsily rewrite Carl Sagan’s timeless motto as... 

“We are made of neutron star-stuff”

III. The Planet Pallas

In 1802, shortly before Napoleon accidentally put the “Spanish Platinum Age” to bed, a new planet was discovered. Heinrich Olbers found it between Mars and Jupiter and named it “Pallas”.  ¹⁸

A second astronomer in England - William Hyde Wollaston - got the news about Planet Pallas. But Wollaston was, at the time, retracing the steps of Chabaneau: purchasing great amounts of Platina from the Americas, and attempting to make pure, malleable platinum... ^19, 20

What Wollaston achieved which Chabaeneu had not, was to identify the presence of two other elements in what is now known as “the platinum group”. Upon isolating this “new noble metal” or “new silver”, he named it Palladium, after Olbers’s great discovery of “Pallas”. ²¹

Just as the Spanish King Carlos III, Wollaston kept his method secret until his death, and was perhaps the only seller of pure platinum, rhodium, and palladium - platinum group metals - in the world for the following 25 years.²²   

The planet Pallas is, in fact, just a large-ish asteroid.

IV. The mystery of Neutron star-stuff 

“...it is to be hoped that the Spanish monarch will 

neither despise so rich a treasure as his mines of platina, 

nor refuse to the world the numerous advantages that may be derived from a substance 

that promises to be of so much importance in commerce and the arts” 

Michael Faraday, 1797²³

(bolds added: even Faraday could only speculate...)

Katrina Perez refers to expert Jack Ogden’s writings on the popularity of platinum through the early 1800s.²⁴ This seems to me to be unlikely...

The author quotes Ogden as identifying this ring as containing platinum...²⁵ 

Perez, in the same piece, claims that Ogden says platinum jewellery was on sale at the 1802 Napoleonic Exposition in Paris. Might this be some lost work by Chabanaeu? We have so far seen only objet d'art (snuff boxes, luxury tablewares, watch chains) with platinum content... 

Once again, Perez leaves us no citations or sources.

It is true that platinum-burnished ceramics were in circulation.²⁸ Such objet d'art may well have been on sale, but this is not the ‘pure, malleable’ stuff of the Pope's Chalice by Chabaneau, nor is it platinum jewellery.

Moreover, when Wollaston gave his final lecture (1828), revealing his methods, our beloved neutron star-stuff  had decidedly less glamorous uses…

"for scientific apparatus, for weights and measures and, started by Wollaston 

and carried on by the French, for boilers for concentrating sulphuric acid."²⁹

Given these sources, I am forced to dispute claims of ‘fashions’ in, or ‘popularity’ of, platinum during the early 1800s (I have contacted Ogden for comment). So popular and fashionable was platinum, that in Russia it was being used to mint coins for popular currency...³⁰

 Russian Rubel (1829) - British Museum

I would instead, for now, conclude that after Napoleon’s clumsy intrusion into the history of platinum in the arts, things took decades to get going again…

So was it Louis-François Cartier who finally revived the lost “Platinum Age”? Archives indicate that he began acquiring the metal in the 1860s³³  - before the houses of Bulgari orVan Cleef were even founded. Or was it Tiffany & Co. with the Tiffany Setting platinum engagement ring of 1886?³⁴Tiffany’s seem to have been engaging significantly with platinum through the latter decades of the 1800s, before that landmark 1886 ring... 

1. 1876-82 "engraved gold bracelets with applied foliate ornament in two-colour gold and platinum" - British Museum
2. 1881–1902 Tiffany and Co's chief designer, Edward C. Moore, experimented with copper-platinum-iron alloy - MET
3. ca.1879: Mustard pot with patinated copper-platinum-iron alloy - MET

Might these experiments have finally led to a breakthrough and in turn to the Tiffany Setting engagement ring?  

But if Tiffany's was the forerunner - the avant la lettre - the harmony, symmetry, and finesse of Louis Cartier was the avant-garde...

Suddenly around 1900 - "taking a daring chance" and "ordering his workshops to leave silver aside"ⁱ - with platinum tiaras, necklaces, dog collars, brooches, corsage ornaments, and watches, it appears that Cartier's platinum output at this time is unrivalled. 

1. c.1908 - Belle-Epoque or early Art Deco Brooch / Pendant, V&A
2. 1910 - Belle-Epoque - Pendant brooch (a) and chain (b), diamonds set in platinum, British Museum
3. 1913 - Art Deco - "possibly Cartier" - black and white, chequerboard, V&A

Platinum jewellery by Fabergé's head jeweller August Wilhelm Holmström also appears prior to the turn of the century. And following in his footsteps was his granddaughter Alma Pihl  - designer of Winter Easter Egg (1913) and the Mosaic Easter Egg (1914) as well pieces of Fabergé snowflake jewellery.

But regardless of who won this race, Neutron-star-stuff now poured into Europe from Russia, Canada, and the United States. The Edwardian, Belle-Époque, and Art Deco movements - not to mention Cartier's "Garland Style" - adored the metal for its lustre (perfect with dazzling precious stones) ductility (able to be comfortably stretched incredibly thinly) and its strength or durability.  

Pieces worked in pure platinum - Chabanaeu’s achievement - had finally, 100 years later, hit jewellers’ shelves.

V. The tragedy of Neutron star-stuff

This slow and stumbling evolution is largely down to two factors:  

1. The melting point of platinum is extreme: 1770°C (3218°F). Gold and Silver are significantly lower - 1063°C (1945°F) and 961°C (1762°F), respectively.  
2.  Metallurgical qualities of platinum make it a great metal for instruments of war famously resulting in its use in the arts being restricted during World War Two. ³⁵

And, uncomfortably, the history of platinum is also a history of violence. The Russian Revolution brought concern over where platinum group metals would come from³⁶. It was British Imperialism that had the solution already to hand. Canada and Australia were the first alternatives³⁷, but in 1925, the geologist Dr Merensky discovered a platinum-rich site³⁸ in another territory of strong British influence -  South Africa. Perfectly positioned to exploit Merensky's discovery were European and American corporations, the “descendants” of the political and industrial exploits of Cecil Rhodes who had - through his diamond mining company De Beers - financed the British South Africa Company (BSAC)³⁹, a vehicle for territorial acquisition across southern Africa⁴⁰. Rhodes, the Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, laid the groundwork for what was to follow….

1. 1947 - The Queen's Flame-Lily Brooch  - Diamonds, platinum, white gold - The Royal Collection Trust
2. 1953 - The Queen's New Zealand Silver-Fern Brooch - Diamonds, platinum - The Royal Collection Trust
3. 1954 - The Queen's Australian Wattle Brooch - Diamonds, platinum - The Royal Collection Trust

Elizabeth’s commonwealth tours through the 1950s - across New Zealand, Canada, Australia,  Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia, after mining magnate Cecil Rhodes) and, of course South Africa - all featured bespoke platinum and diamond brooches. 

The materials had come home, but perhaps more importantly, the restrictions of World War Two had been lifted. 

The precious metal was back on the market.

CLICK to see platinum pieces at LOST OWL

All the Fabergé Eggs to have included platinum: 1881 until the Revolution...

Bibliography

JOHNSON MATTHEY's Platinum Metals Review; an Oppenheimer partner, through ANGLO AMERICAN

• CHASTON J. C. - The Powder Metallurgy of Platinum AN HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF ITS ORIGINS AND GROWTH - 1991, 35, (3) 
• COTTINGTON, Ian E. - Palladium; or, New Silver” NO STRANGER TO SCIENTIFIC CONTROVERSY -1991, 35 
  
• COTTINGTON, Ian E. - Michael Faraday and Platinum “THIS BEAUTIFUL, MAGNIFICENT AND VALUABLE METAL -  1991, 35, (4)
  
• COUSINS, C. A. - The Bushveld Igneous Complex THE GEOLOGY OF SOUTH AFRICA’S PLATINUM RESOURCES - 1959, 3, (3)
  
• HUNT, L. B. - Platinum in the Decoration of Porcelain and Pottery - 1978, 22, (4)
  
• McDONALD, Donald - One Hundred and Fifty Years AN ANNIVERSARY REVIEW OF JOHNSON MATTHEY’S ROLE IN THE ECONOMIC HISTORY OF PLATINUM  - 1967, 11, (l),
  
• MCDONALD, Donald - The Platinum Chalice of Pope Pius VI - 1960, 4, (2) 
  

Cosmology 

• LEVAN, A.J., Gompertz, B.P., Salafia, O.S. et al. HEAVY-ELEMENT PRODUCTION IN A COMPACT OBJECT MERGER OBSERVED BY JWST. Nature 626, 737–741 (2024)
  
• REDDY, Francis; McENERY, Julie; CENKO Brad; TROJA, Eleonora - STAR COLLISION - NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab -  NASA, GSFC, University of Maryland College Park: link
  
• Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer Learning Center (RXTE)- NASA - link
  
• SAMPLE, Ian -  Creation of rare heavy elements witnessed in neutron-star collision - The Guardian - 2023 link

Pieces

• Vincent, Clare, Jan Hendrik Leopold, and Elizabeth Sullivan - EUROPEAN CLOCKS AND WATCHES IN THE METROPOLITAN MESEUM OF ART - 2015, 
• The Tiffany Setting: link
• 32 Caliber Single-Action Revolver - The MET. - link
• The Azov Egg: link
• PEREZ on OGDEN: link
  
• ROYAL COLLECTION TRUST - link - Prince Albert's Ring (1930-35)
• MERLE, Sandrine - How Cartier’s love of gemstones led to platinum  - The French Jewellery Post - 2023 - link
  

Cartier 

• CHAZAL, Gilles - THE ART OF CARTIER - Musée du Petit Palais (1989)

Rhodes, Oppenheimer, and Rustenburg

• Charter International plc - CHARTER CONSOLIDATED 
• GALBRAITH, John S. - CROWN AND CHARTER The Early Years of the British South Africa Company - 1974
• NKRUMAH, Kwame -  NEOCOLONIALISM, Mining interests in Central Africa - 1965
• NKRUMAH, Kwame -  NEOCOLONIALISM, The Oppenheimer Empire - 1965
  
• ORANJE, NEL , HUYSSTEEN and MARITZ -  A BRIEF HISTORY OF PLATINUM MINING WITH A FOCUS ON THE RUSTENBURG REGION: link
  
• SHIVAMBU, Floyd - THE OPPENHEIMER EMPIRE, - article in The Radical Voice - February 2024 - link
  
• https://www.britannica.com/money/Ernest-Oppenheimer
  
• OFFICIAL - Responsible Platinum/Palladium Compliance Report for RUSTENBURG PLATINUM MINES LIMITED - 2021 : link
  

References

1. SAMPLE (2023)
2. CHASTON (1991), pg.73
3. ORANJE et al. pg.4
4. ibid.
5. CHASTON (1991), pg.73
   
6. ibid. 
7. MACDONALD (1960) pg.89
8. CHASTON (1991), pg.73
   
9. ibid.
   
10. SAMPLE (2023)
11. ibid
12. REDDY et al.
13. LEVAN et al. (2024)
14. SAMPLE (2023)
15. ibid.
16. RXTE
17. SAMPLE (2023)
18. COTTINGTON (1991) pg.147
    
19. ibid.
20. CHASTON (1991) pg.146
    
21. COTTINGTON (Palladium - 1991) pg.141
22. ibid. pg.146
23. COTTINGTON (Faraday - 1991) pg.141
    
24. PEREZ (online - link) 
25. ibid.
26. Royal Collection Trust (1930-35)
27. CHASTON (1991) pg.72
28. HUNT (1978) pg.143
    
29. McDONALD (1967) pg.18
30. ibid. pg.19
31. VINCENT et al. (2015)
32. The Kremlin Museums  - THE "MEMORY OF AZOV" EASTER EGG
33. MERLE (2023)
34. Serendipity Diamonds - link
35. H. Cross Company - PLATINUM - link
36. McDONALD (1967) pg.22
    
37. ibid. pg.23
38. ibid. pg.24
39. GALBRAITH, (1974)
40. https://www.rhodeshouse.ox.ac.uk/media2/3h4p3rzz/the-life-and-legacy-of-cecil-rhodes.pdf
41. McDONALD (1967) pg.18
    
42. ORANJE et al. pg.12
    
43. https://www.britannica.com/money/Ernest-Oppenheimer
    
44. Charter International plc - CHARTER CONSOLIDATED
    
45. Platinum/Palladium Compliance Report (2021)
    
46. SHIVAMBU (2024) pg. 7

-----

i. reference added: CHAZAL (1989)