Chris Ploof debuts Modern Electrum jewelry as gold prices bite
Chris Ploof’s new Modern Electrum line turns an ancient gold-silver alloy into a lower-priced, non-tarnishing alternative as gold costs keep rising.
Gold prices have pushed designers to look beyond the usual karats, and Chris Ploof’s answer was to revive electrum for the modern hand. His new Modern Electrum collection, launched in May, takes an alloy once linked to the first coins of the Western world and recasts it as a wearable, mixed-metal option for rings, pendants and other daily pieces.
The appeal is practical as much as romantic. Modern Electrum is being pitched as non-tarnishing, lightweight, durable and malleable, a rare combination at a moment when the World Gold Council has said high prices are likely to keep weighing on jewelry demand in 2026. Ploof told JCK that retailers reacted with visible excitement when they saw the metal, and the line’s pricing makes clear why: his pieces start at $935 and rise to $2,195 depending on whether diamonds are included. JCK also reported pendants at $695 and $1,065, a range that puts the material well below many comparable gold pieces while still keeping it in fine-jewelry territory.
That value proposition is tied to how the alloy was made. Legor, the Italy-based metals company behind the project, says its laboratories worked with Diamonds De Canada to develop a proprietary Modern Electrum blend from certified recycled precious metals. Legor says its scientists concluded that the unidentified element in ancient electrum was likely platinum or platinum-group metals, including palladium, which gave the company a technical path back to the old material without simply copying it.
Historically, electrum was either natural or artificial, with at least 20 percent silver, and its color could run from white-gold to brassy depending on composition. Britannica notes that it was used for the first known coins in the Western world, with coinage possibly beginning in Lydia, in Asia Minor, in the 7th century BC. That lineage gives Ploof’s project a useful edge: the metal feels both antique and oddly current, especially in an era of mixed-metal dressing and stackable wedding jewelry that does not insist on matching one shade exactly.
Chris Ploof Designs, based in Leominster, Massachusetts, hand-forges its jewelry in a Massachusetts studio, and the Modern Electrum range leans into that handcrafted identity with beveled, concave, hammered, milgrain, ridged, side-groove, stepped, swirled, wyvern and Yanone styles. The company is pairing some designs with fluorescent stones from Diamonds de Canada, sourced from the Gahcho Kué mine in the Northwest Territories, a detail that adds another layer of color and provenance. For bridal and everyday jewelry alike, Modern Electrum looks less like a novelty than an early signal that the market is searching for metals that can do more than simply cost more.
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