A coating for jewellery, costume jewellery and furnishing items and in general for personal use items, items likewise coated and the use of said coating to coat these items

The present invention relates to a coating for jewellery, costume jewellery and furnishing items and in general for personal use items. The invention extends to items coated with this coating and to the use of the latter to coat these items.

The field of the invention is that of materials used to coat jewellery items (such as bracelets, necklaces, and the like), furnishing items (for instance, armchairs and handles) and in general other items for personal use.

These coatings are traditionally made of fabric, leather or another flexible material, the function of which is to give the coated item a special aesthetical effect, protecting it at the same time from tearing and from wear. There are also known coatings formed by precious metal material sheets, cast according to the shape of the core of the model to coat and therefore fixed on the surface of the latter (a collar, the handle of a handbag, etc.)

In the first case, the flexibility of the coating material employed makes the operations required for the application of the same on the item to be coated easier, with the drawback, however, that this material has neither the resistance nor the value that are instead typical of precious materials. On the contrary, in the second embodiment mentioned, besides the advantage of forming a coating which is resistant to wear and is made of a precious material, the metal material displays the drawback of being rigid and thus only mouldable with the aid of specific tools and by operations which are usually complex. Furthermore, this drawback is particularly felt in the fields of jewellery and furnishing, in which the different forms of the products depend on the imagination and on the artistic sense of the designer.

Therefore, the main object of the present invention is to provide a new coating for jewellery, costume jewellery and furnishing items and in general for personal use items, which, unlike the above-described known technique, allows to coat items displaying any shape, specifically shapes which are extremely different because they are intended for the ornamental and furnishing field, with a precious and wear-resistant metal material, however without recourse to specific tools, in a simple and rapid way, which is typical of fabrics, leather and other flexible materials generally used for such a purpose.

These and other purposes are achieved with the coating, the coated items and the use of this coating, respectively according to claims 1, 5 and 6. Preferred embodiments of the invention result from the remaining claims.

Compared to the known coatings, the coating according to the invention offers the advantage of allowing to coat items having any shape, with a metal material, preferably a precious material, suitable to confer a particular value and an improved resistance to the item coated in this manner, with operations which however are rapid and simple, having recourse to the normal tools in use in the generic laboratories which deal with costume jewellery items, furnishing items and the like.

These and other purposes, advantages and features result from the following description of some preferred embodiments of the coating of the invention shown by way of non-limitative example, in the figures of the accompanying drawings, in which:

• figures 1 and 2 show examples of the coating of the invention;
• figures 3 and 4 show enlarged details of examples of the plait of metal wires in figures 1 and 2;
• figures 5 and 6 show examples of collars coated with the plait of figures 1 and 2;
• figure 7 shows an example of handbag provided with parts coated with the plait in figures 1 and 2;
• figure 8 shows some examples of kitchen tools coated with the plait in figures 1 and 2;
• figure 9 shows some examples of frames prepared with the plait of figures 1 and 2;
• figure 10 shows an armchair provided with ornaments made with the plait of figures 1 and 2; and
• figure 11 shows an example of handle coated with the plait in figures 1 and 2.

The coating according to the invention substantially consists of a flexible plait 1 of metal wires, preferably precious metal wires, prepared in the form of the flexible sheet 2 in figure 1, or of the flexible sleeve 3 in figure 2. The plaiting of these metal wires, which is shown in better detail in figures 3 and 4, outlines a substantially "fishbone" structure, in which the wires 4 of a strip 5 of the plait 1 are arranged at an angle with respect to the wires 6 of the adjacent strip 7 (figure 4).

Jewellery, costume jewellery and furnishing items and the like may be coated with this flexible plait of metal wires in a simple and rapid manner (i.e. like for materials such as fabrics, leather, and the like).

In this manner, for example, the sleeve 3 of the plait 1 of figure 2 may be used to coat the core of the collars 8 and 9 in figures 5 and 6; the handle 10 of the handbag in figure 7; the handles of the cutlery 11 and of the tray 12 shown in figure 8; the frames 13 in figure 9; the legs 14 of the armchair in figure 10; the handle 15 shown in figure 11.

The sheet 2 of the plait 1 in figure 1 may be used instead to create ornamental patterns on the surface of the item, as for instance the band 16 on the handbag in figure 7 or the pattern 17 on the front of the seat of the armchair in figure 10, with the function to also protect the item from wear in its more delicate or exposed parts.

The flexible nature of the coating of the invention allows to apply the plait 1 with rapid and simple operations, having recourse to the tools which are normally available in jewellery laboratories or household furnishing tapestry laboratories. In this manner, there are obtained common and personal use items, which are made more resistant to wear and more precious by the metal wire plait forming the coating of the invention. It is thereby understood that the latter is not limited to the pattern and to the shapes of the above-described plait, nor to the application of the same to the items, displayed herein by mere way of indication of the countless other possibilities for use of the patented coating.