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Antique Jewelry
Peter W. Rowe wrote:
On Mon, 31 Aug 2009 10:30:08 -0700, in rec.crafts.jewelry Ganesh wrote: This one's very easy to make http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:We...uvre_AC924.jpg with modern tools and methods, yes. Doing it with starting raw materials and tools available to the 7th century byzantine goldsmith might be a bit more daunting. A ring like that, for example, likely was not cast, so one would need to have some skill with chisels or engraving tools to do the carving, and the steel back then wasn't as good, not to mention the fact that the goldsmith would have had to make his own tools beforehand. Remember, files for shaping metal were not yet available either. Most forming would be with hammers... And you couldn't just go to your metals dealer and buy ready to use sheet or wire... Also, the niello (black) inlay isn't quite as simple to do as might seem, especially with ancient technologies. Doable? certainly. But I think I'd take the word "very" out from your sentance... Peter An interesting question, how easy was it for a 7th cent Byzantine gold smith to make? He could either, have cast it, or wrought it from a single piece of metal.or at least acouple of pieces then soldered it together. Considering the former first, Casting of metals had been well established for at least 3000 yrs before the 7th cent. witnessed by the thousands of everyday cast bronze age artifacts that have been found here in the UK and elsewhere so my guess is it was cast first of all then chased up with chisels and punches. The intaglio design would have been cut with chisels and then with punches. A well established technique used in coin reverse punch making. Look at this metalworking practice in the coinage of this period and earlier to understand this process.. . most medieval metal workers were multiskilled and drew on the expertise in other metalworking areas.more then than we do today. So was it wrought? Considering how malleable gold is, it would be quite possible to take a piece of alluvial gold and with hammers , punches, and just a bronze mandrel form it first into a round disk with a upstand across the diameter. This section could then have been pierced with a punch and stretched over a mandrel to form the shank. An intersting exercise would be to take a piece of lead to try and replicate this way of forming this ring completly cold, ie without any heat. Then when one was able to replicate this design in this way, do it again in fine silver. then in gold. As to the carat quality of the original ring , our assay office in london currently uses spectrographic analysis of metal alloys using only the minutest quantity of the original metal. Do you Peter get the annual Goldsmiths Review, published by the Goldsmith s Co in London? The current issue has an interesting study of the assay offices work in a large forgery case of early English silver. they run the assay offices in the UK. They could tell exactly what the metal constituents were. If the ring in question is fine gold it would be ductile enough to forge up cold using the above technique. The niello formula and inlay technique is well documented in Uppi Untrachat's book on jewellery making through the ages. Tho I havent looked at this book on my shelf for sometime. Anyone have the time to run some trials? Regards to all. Ted In Dorset Uk |
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