This ultra-fine platinum and pearl bracelet embodies everything the Art Deco style, or Art Decorative, is famed for. Naturally it is made out of platinum, an element much loved at the time. Platinum is an element found in the mines with silver, but quite different in nature.
The first traces of platinum can be found in Egyptian items, of which they were unaware. When in the 15th century the Spanish conquerers swept into South America, they became aware of it when they were delving for silver. The element simply didn't respond the same as silver did. Because it was more grey and less responsive (platinum requires great temperatures to reach melting point) they considered it inferior, rather useless. Which is why they named it 'platina del pinto' or little silver of the pinto river. 
It was not until the mid 16th century, when the scientist Julius Ceasar Scaliger (he had ambitious parents) started fiddling around with it, that platinum was properly identified.
Still, nobody quite knew what to do with it. Until the alchemists in the 17th century saw a golden opportunity: to turn it into gold.
They tried and tried...nothing. 
Throughout the 18th century platinum popped up in jewellery on rare occasions because the metal remained hard to work with, so few dared to touch it. 
Finally, in the early 1800s, two English chaps found ways to make it malliable. Within a small elite of goldsmiths and experts, platinum now officially became 'a thing'.
Still, it took to 1890, when Cartier and Tiffany's jumped on it, that platinum became a hype. Their material of choice released a veritable wirlwind of trends. Platinum has never been off season since.
As mentioned before, platinum is not easy to work with, difficult to shape. But once it is...like diamonds, it is extremely durable and it hardly wears. It is just one of the reasons why so many gems were, and are, set in platinum.