Silversmithing

“ The offensive arms must have been defective, owing to the ignorance of steel. Iron, silver, and gold were all used in making or ornamenting arms, besides the more common bronze. With the welding of iron, and the use of a kind of solder, the workmen in those days appear to have been familiar.
The necklaces, eardrops, rings, brooches, collars, crowns, goblets, salvers, and vases, manufactured of the precious metals or the finer sorts of bronze, and often set with precious stones, may be enumerated as the chief articles of the jeweler’s and silversmith’s trade. ”

“ Even with all these tools—plus forge, ingot molds, drawing bench, binding wire, and many other essentials of the craft—the silversmith was limited to six basic methods of working silver. These were casting, forging, raising, hollowing, seaming, and creasing—the principal methods still employed by hand craftsmen today.
But forging, raising, hollowing, and creasing are all hammering processes, though they differ significantly in the manipulation of the metal under the hammer. ”

“ As regards technique, the metal-work of the early nineteenth century generally displayed considerable poverty of material. The gold, if not pinchbeck imitation, was usually thin, light, and of low quality, with simple designs in the form of clusters of grapes. Borders of leaves and flowers in the antique style were stamped and chased sometimes in open-work, with small rose-shaped ornaments applied. Granulated, beaded, and purled work was much employed, and the surface of the metal was often matted. ”

“ It is more probable that the art began in the workshops of the goldsmiths, who were so skilled in engraving upon metal that impressions of much artistic value have been taken from work executed by them in the twelfth century, showing that they really were engravers obliged to remain goldsmiths, because the art of printing from metal plates was unknown. [1] By their knowledge of design and their artistic execution, at least, if not by their mechanical inventiveness, the goldsmiths were the lineal ancestors of the great engravers of the Renaissance. ”

“ The covers of the Textus in the Victoria and Albert Museum are highly important examples of goldsmiths' work; they are of gold and silver, decorated with enamel and set with stones, probably dating from the 12th century.
Celtic.-The skill in metal-working of the Celtic people in the British Islands, especially in Ireland, in Pagan and Christian times, is well known, and need hardly be emphasized here. While much has perished, much happily remains in proof of their extraordinary skill in working gold and silver, particularly in jewelry. ”

“ The point was like a needle's, and terminated a slender, tapering blade, silver-like in its brightly polished steel, two-edged, and of indubitable fineness. The guard, a solid piece of beautifully engraved gold, was shaped somewhat like a Cupid's bow, while the hilt, of silver, was decorated with an intricate, graceful pattern of chasing, inlaid with gold, and surrounding a scroll upon which was engraved in script the single word:
Paquita
The chasing, in addition to being an exquisite work of art, possessed also the utility of supplying an excellent purchase for any hand grasping it. ”

“ The silver-lover who is something more than a worshipper of the hall-mark must recognize the beauty and power that lay in the hammer, the raising tools and tracers of a repoussé worker such as Marks; and appreciate the apparent ease with which he could work the yielding metal, play with his pattern and his ornament, and bring it up to accents of sharpness or caress it into liquid meltingness. ”

“ Vast quantities of jewelled objects, which must have been in great part native productions, have also been tabulated in the inventories of our monarchs, princes, guilds, and corporations. Judging from extant examples of English painted glass, sculpture, and particularly embroidery, some estimate can be formed of the high quality of the goldsmiths' work, which was scarcely excelled in the Middle Ages by that of any other country in Europe. The English goldsmiths, in fact, after the Norman Conquest seem to have lost none of the skill which is displayed on their earlier productions. ”

“ The application of machinery to the production of personal ornaments in gold and silver can only be economically and successfully carried on when there is a large demand for similar objects, that is to say, objects of precisely the same design and decoration throughout. In machine-made jewelry everything is stereotyped, so to speak, and the only work required for the hand is to fit the parts together—in some instances scarcely that. A design is made, and from it steel dies are sunk for stamping out as rapidly as possible from a plate of rolled metal the portion represented by each die. ”

“ The decoration of the earliest jewellery of Europe—that of the Bronze Age, which dates roughly from about a thousand years before the Christian era—is by means of spiral and zigzag patterns. Ornaments have free endings, bent in spiral, snail-shell coils. The earliest were cast, though the hammer was used towards the close of the period; solder was unknown, and rivets alone employed. Gold and bronze were the only metals employed, the latter being sometimes gilt by means of thin gold plates, while amber is often found used as a jewel. ”

“ The art of the silversmith in England about this period had suffered more than any other artistic industry, and in the matter of design it seemed to have reached the twilight state of semi-insanity, and was utterly devoid of any artistic merit.
A great improvement is, however, to be seen in the work of respectable firms and in that of many private craftsmen of to-day, but many shop windows are still filled with costly work in the precious metals that are worthless from an artistic point of view. ”

“ The smith's tools were of many sorts; but the chief were his hammer, pincers, chisel, tongs, and anvil. It is astonishing what a variety of articles he turned out of his smithy by the help of these rude implements. In the tooling, chasing, and consummate knowledge of the capabilities of iron, he greatly surpassed the modern workman; for the mediaeval blacksmith was an artist as well as a workman. The numerous exquisite specimens of his handicraft which exist in our old gateways, church doors, altar railings, and ornamented dogs and andirons, still serve as types for continual reproduction. ”

“ American silver, dispensing with the heavy ornamentation for ornament’s sake that often characterized the work of London silversmiths, tended to be substantial, serviceable, and vigorous in form, befitting the environment in which it was to be used. ”

“ Whilst mediæval metal-workers produced grand examples full of design and ornament, influenced by the touch with Eastern nations which the Crusaders gave them, the later smiths and founders gradually evolved styles of their own, more English to our ideas. The Renaissance with its wealth of ornament did not so much apply to copper and brass as it did to the metal-work of the smith who forged that which was beautiful and ornate in iron on his anvil. ”

“ Among the silversmith’s final procedures would have been the stamping of his mark, his initials, or his name on the piece. This practice of identifying the maker of an article of gold or silver ware is of long standing, though perhaps not so ancient as the custom by which a painter or sculptor signs his work.
Since the year 1300 the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths of the City of London has been charged by the British government with assaying gold and silver wares 30 and coins, and certifying that the metals are of required fineness. ”

“ Niello is more than simply a drawing on metal. That would come under the head of engraving. A graver is used to cut out the design on the surface of the silver, which is simply a polished plane. When the drawing has been thus incised, a black enamel, made of lead, lamp black, and other substances, is filled into the interstices, and rubbed in; when quite dry and hard, this is polished. The result is a black enamel which is then fused into the silver, so that the whole is one surface, and the decoration becomes part of the original plate. ”

“ Having now described some of the processes in the working of silver, and alluded to the various articles which are produced by wire-drawing; raising with the hammer; stamping; spinning; chasing, &c.; we shall next direct attention to those processes which immediately come after the putting together and soldering the article; and foremost of these is polishing. We trust that the foregoing details in reference to this part of the subject will convey some idea of the art of silver-working.
Polishing is an important process With all precious metal workers. ”

“ The native silversmiths hammer out good designs in silver relief for betel- and tobacco-boxes, and exhibit great taste and invention in belt- and jacket-clasps, and in heavy knobs of hairpins and ear-rings, that are often made of gold and incrusted over with gems for richer folk. ”

“ The plumber’s art of the middle ages is wrought out like colossal goldsmith’s work, and we have found striking correspondence between the two [77] arts as well in the methods of application as in the forms admitted: gilding and applied colour here replace enamel.” The design is of tabernacle work with figures and the whole was clearly intended to recall a shrine of goldsmith’s work. Large engraved patterns filled with black used alone on the silvery lead become great niellos, exactly parallel to the method of treating silver.
Fig. 36.—Painted Decoration, Bourges. ”

“ It is in these steel dies that the skill of the artist die-sinker is manifested. Brooches, ear-rings, pinheads, bracelets, lockets, pendants, &c., are struck out by the gross. This is more especially the case in silver and in plated work—that is, imitation jewelry—the base of which is an alloy, afterwards gilt by electro-plating. With these ornaments imitation stones in paste and glass, pearls, &c., are used, and it is remarkable that of late years some of the best designs, the most simple, appropriate and artistic, have appeared in imitation jewelry. ”

“ For tongs, the smiths generally use a bullet-mold, while they formerly took two straight pieces of iron, or, if they had nothing better, two sticks. A stone is made to serve as an anvil. Iron beads and bracelets are made, and the last are adorned with some neatly engraved pattern. Some of the rings of which I have obtained specimens, which have been simply turned upon a stick and welded, would do credit to a European smith. I have seen copper bracelets that had been bent into a spiral shape resembling a coiled snake. ”

“ Translucent blue glass or enamel, mounted or set with pearls, diamonds or pastes, and chased and coloured gold, were all fashionable. On the whole, cut steel was the most popular. A Birmingham craftsman by name of Heeley, who worked for Wedgwood about 1780, is recorded is being especially skilful at this class of work; while in France a certain Dauffe had almost a monopoly in the production of steel objects. Certainly some of the open-work steel buttons of the time—English as well as French—are jewels of a very high order.
Bracelets were mostly formed of bands of velvet with oval clasps. ”

“ In essence, thus, there are only three techniques of forming silver into an article of desired shape: casting the molten metal in a properly shaped mold; hammering an ingot into the shape desired; and building the desired shape from smaller pieces soldered together. Wire produced on the drawing bench might be one of these smaller elements. Filing is considered to be a finishing rather than a forming process.
These forming and working processes, as they would have been used by an eighteenth-century silversmith, will be described in more detail in a moment. ”

“ Gold is scarcely any longer employed, except for jewels; and silver in a thousand forms creeps into the manufacture of furniture. After cabinets, covered and ornamented with carving in silver, came the articles of silver furniture invented by Claude Ballin. But the mass of precious metal withdrawn from circulation was soon returned to it, and the fashion passed away. The goldsmiths found themselves reduced to manufacture only objects of small size; and for the most part they limited themselves to works of jewellery, which subjected them to less annoyance from the mint. ”

“ Some artists have gone straight to work at their seals with merely cutting directly into their silver, and without casting at all, but pluckily doing their design straight on in the reverse with genuine knowledge of their art, and using the steel dies of which I told you, and they succeeded in it, too. ”

“ The engraver on metal habitually cut his own designs, and between the arts of the goldsmith and the painter there had always been a close alliance, both being habitually exercised by persons of the same family and sometimes by one and the same person; so that there was no lack of hands ready-trained for the new craft which required of the man who practised it that he should design like a painter and cut metal like a goldsmith. ”

“ Lastly they built a smithy, and furnished it with hammers, tongs, and anvils, and with these made all the other requisite instruments, with which they worked in metal, stone and wood, and composed so large a quantity of the metal called gold that they made all their moveables of it. ”

“ Improved skill in design and workmanship became incompatible with the retention of the older and coarser enamel-work, and without relinquishing a medium which by the brilliancy of its colouring was eminently suited to the works of the goldsmith, the thirteenth-century craftsman obtained the desired result by the use of translucent enamel upon metal, usually silver, chased and modelled in low relief. ”