Filigree (also sparse filagree , and previously written filigrann or filigrene ) is a fine type of metal jewelry, usually of gold and silver, made with small beads or twisted yarns, or both in combination, soldered together or onto surfaces of objects of the same metal and arranged in artistic motifs. It often shows lace and remains popular in India and other Asian metals. It was also popular in Italian, French and Portuguese metals from 1660 to the end of the 19th century. Should not be confused with ajoure jewelery work, an ajoure technique consisting of drilling holes on objects made of sheet metal.
The English word filigree is abbreviated from the previous use of filigreen derived from the Latin "filum" which means yarn and granum grains, in the sense of small beads. Latin words provide filigrants in Italian which in itself is the French filigrane of the 17th century French.
Video Filigree
Histori
Although filigree has become a specialized branch of jewelery in modern times, it is historically a part of ordinary jewelry work. Indeed, all Etruscans and Greek jewels (other than those meant for graves, and therefore of substantial characters) are made by soldering together and building gold rather than by sculpting or carving material.
Ancient work
Archaeological finds in ancient Mesopotamia show that filigree was incorporated into jewelry since 3000 BC. Especially for the city of Midyat in the province of Mardin in upper Mesopotamia, the filigree form using silver and gold wire, known as "telescope", developed in the 15th century. To this day, expert craftsmen in this region continue to produce good pieces of telcari.
Egyptian jewelry uses wire, both to put in the background and weave or set the rod. However, with the exception of the chain, it can not be said that many filigree jobs are practiced by them. Their strength lies in the work of their cloisonnà © and the ornaments they print. Many examples, however, remain a fine gold chain of fine wire, as still made by Indian filigree workers, and are known as trichinopoly chains. Of the few it hung a small chain of fine wire with small fish and other pendants tied to them.
In ornaments derived from Phoenician sites, such as Cyprus and Sardinia, the gold wire pattern is laid with great delicacy in golden soil, but it progresses to the highest perfection in Greek and Etruscan philosophies from the 6th to 3rd centuries BC. A number of other personalized earrings and ornaments found in Italy are being preserved in the Louvre and in the British Museum. Almost everything is made of work of filigree. Some flower-shaped earrings of geometric design, limited by one or more rims each made of minute gold wire, and this type of decoration varies with slight differences in how to dispose of numbers or settings from fallout. But the feathers and petals of modern Italian filigrites are not seen in this ancient design. Institutions occur, but rarely, where the filigree device in the wire is self-contained and is not applied to metal plates.
The Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg contains a large collection of Scythian jewels from the Crimea tomb. Many of the bracelets and necklaces in the collection are made of twisted wire, some inside as many as seven rows of webbing, with clasps in the form of beaten headed beasts. The other is a large beaded strand of gold, adorned with volute, knots and other wire patterns soldered over the surface. In the British Museum, a stick, probably from a Greek priest, was covered with golden laps knitted and crushed, finished with some sort of capital of Corinth and a green glass boss.
Asia
It is possible that in India and parts of central Asian philosophy have been worked on from the most remote periods without any change in design. Whether Asian jewelry is influenced by the Greeks who settled on the continent, or simply trained under traditions shared with them, it is certain that Indian filigree workers retain the same pattern as the ancient Greeks and work them in the same way, until today. The wandering worker was given so much gold, created or rough, weighed, heated in a charcoal pot, beaten into a wire, and then worked on the courtyard or porch of the employer's house according to the artist's design, which weighed down the work to recover and be paid at the rate certain for his work. Very fine grain or beads and gold spines, almost thicker than coarse hair, projecting from golden plates are an ornamentation method still in use.
Cuttack, from the eastern Indian state of Odisha, displays traditional philosophy Known as Odia, in most of the work of the filigree revolving around the image of the god, though due to the lack of patronage and modern design ideas, it is an art that dying. Also noted is the Karimnagar silver filigree in the country of Telangana.
Medieval Europe
Over time, there are many collections of medieval gems, coverings for biblical books, etc., Created in Constantinople from the 6th to the 12th century, or in monasteries in Europe, where studying and imitating Byzantine 'goldsmith work. These objects, besides being enriched with precious stones, are polished, but not cut into sides, and with enamel, often decorated with filigri. Large golden surfaces are sometimes covered with scolded sowing scrolls, and the corner pieces of the book cover, or the panel of relics, often consist of complex pieces of wavy work alternating with enameled spaces. Byzantine filigree sometimes works with small stones between curves or knots. Examples of such decorations can be seen in Victoria and Albert, and British Museums. Examples include the Lothair Cross in Aachen.
In northern Europe, the Saxons, British, and Celtic came from an early period who was skilled in some sort of goldsmith work. A remarkable example of filigree patterns put on wire in gold, from Anglo-Saxon tombs, can be seen in the British Museum, especially a brooch from Dover, and the sword handle from Cumberland. The Staffordshire Hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver (estimated 700Ã, CE) was found in a field in Staffordshire, England, on July 5, 2009 containing many examples of very fine filigree described by archaeologist Kevin Leahy as "extraordinary".
Irish filigree work from the Insular period is wiser in design and more varied in patterns. The Royal Irish Academy in Dublin contains a number of private relics and jewelery, where filigree is the most common and extraordinary ornament. The Tara brooch has been copied and replicated, and its shape and decorations are well known. Instead of fine curls or strands of gold thread, Irish filigree varies with designs where one thread can be traced through strange knots and complications, which are, disposed of on a large surface, balancing each other, but always with varieties and special arrangements that difficult. to track with the eyes. Long threads appear and disappear without continuity violation, the two ends generally work to the head and tail of a snake or a monster.
A stopover containing "St. Patrick's bells" is covered with knotted work in many variations. A two-handed trophy, called "Ardagh Chalice" found near Limerick in 1868, is adorned with an extraordinarily fine work. Twelve placards in a band surround the body of the vase, plaque on each handle and around the foot of the vase has a series of different characteristic design patterns, in a fine filigree wire work done on the front of repousse ground.
Most medieval gems worked throughout Europe until the fifteenth century, on railroad tracks, crosses, croziers, and other ecclesiastical goldworkers, departing with bosses and filigree borders. Filigree worked in silver practiced by the Moors in Spain during the Middle Ages with great skill, and was introduced by them and established throughout the Iberian Peninsula, therefore brought to Spanish colonies in America.
Manufacturing is scattered across the Balearic Islands, and among populations that limit the Mediterranean. These are still made throughout Italy, and in Portugal, Malta, Macedonia, Albania, the Ionian Islands and many other parts of Greece. That the Greeks are sometimes on a large scale, with some wire thickness alternating with bigger and smaller bosses and beads, sometimes set with turquoises, and mounted on convex plates, making rich decorative headpieces, belts , and breast trimmings. Wire silver buttons and small bosses are worn by farmers in most countries that produce these jewelry.
Broochs and silver filigree buttons are also made in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Small chains and pendants added to this much northern work.
Iberian Peninsula
The oldest pieces of filigree found in the Iberian Peninsula date back to 2000-2500 BC, but its origins are unclear. These pieces may belong to merchants and navigators from the Middle East and were not considered to be produced in the region at that time. In the 8th century, filigree was produced in Portugal. It happened with the arrival of the Arab population, which also brought a new pattern. Over time, the peninsula began to produce different filigree patterns, but while in Spain the filigree jewelry making tradition became less relevant, in Portugal it was perfected. After the 18th century, Portuguese Filigree already had its own fantasy, motif, and form. Filigree works of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries became famous for their extraordinary complexity. Finest gold and silver filigree jewelry and artistic designs are still made in considerable numbers throughout the country, especially the filigree heart is an icon of Portuguese jewelry making.
Some very interesting philosophical works were brought to England from Abyssinia after the Battle of Magdala: armguards, sandals, and cups, some of which are now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. They are made of thin silver plates, on which the wirework is soldered. Filigree is divided by the narrow boundaries of simple patterns, and the intervening spaces are made up of many patterns, some with grains arranged at intervals.
Maps Filigree
Fabrication and use methods
This art can be said to consist of spinning, curling and adhesion of flexible metal threads, and uniting them at their contact points with each other, and with soil, using fluxes such as borax, with the help of blowpipe. When granulation motifs are desired, small beads are traditionally made by using precious metal wire or fine sheet to begin with, cut in small pieces mixed with flux and placed in small holes of the pitted charcoal block ( or other appropriate). refractory material) and then melted with a blowpipe (or today with a welding torch), after which pieces of wire roll up and take shape like a natural ball to end up in very small grains that are slightly different from each other. Small beads or beads of the same metal are often set in the eyes of volutes, at the intersection, or at intervals where they will turn on the wirework effectively. Finer jobs are generally protected by a stouter wire frame.
Brooches, crosses, earrings, buttons and other personal ornaments of modern filigree are generally surrounded and divided by square or flat metal bands, giving consistency to the filling, which will not retain the proper shape.
Filigree jewelry designs, and twisting and soldering techniques, have applications in other metal works such as wrought-iron brackets hanging walls and silertoned doors.
Groundwork
A few words should be added for the granular job. The decoration consists of small beads, gold grains, soldered to form patterns on metal surfaces. Granulation is employed by Mesopotamian craftsmen. The Sumerians were regarded as the first to practice this metalworking technique. Its use is rare in Egypt. It happened in Cyprus in the early period, such as in the gold pendant at the British Museum of Enkomi in Cyprus (10th century BC). The pendant is pomegranate, and has a triangle pattern, formed by more than 3,000 separate minutes separately. This also happened to the 7th century BC ornaments from Camirus in Rhodes. But these grains are large, compared to those found on Etruscan jewelry. Fortunato Pio Castellani, who has made antique jewelry from Etruscans and Greece, studies in particular, with the aim of reproducing the ancient model, found it for a long time impossible to revive this special process of fine soldering. He overcame the difficulty eventually, with the discovery of a traditional school of artisans at Sant'Angelo di Vado, which with the help of his famous reproduction was completed.
References
Bibliography
- This article incorporates text from publications now in the public domain: Ã, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Filigree". EncyclopÃÆ'Â|dia Britannica . 10 (issue 11). Cambridge University Press. pp.Ã, 343-344.
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