Filigree
This article needs additional citations for verification. (June 2008) |
Filigree (also less commonly spelled filagree, and formerly written filigrann or filigrene)[
In jewellery, it is usually of
The English word filigree is shortened from the earlier use of filigreen which derives from Latin filum meaning thread and granum grain, in the sense of small bead. The Latin words gave filigrana in Italian which itself became filigrane in 17th-century French.[1][2]
History
Though filigree has become a special branch of jewellery in modern times, it was historically part of the ordinary work of the jeweller. Indeed, all the jewellery of the
Ancient work
Archaeological finds in ancient Mesopotamia indicate that filigree was incorporated into jewellery since 3,000 BC. Specific to the city of Midyat in Mardin Province in upper Mesopotamia, a form of filigree using silver and gold wires, known as "telkari", was developed in the 15th century. Examples of historic artwork can bee seen in the Midyat Filigree Museum.[5] To this day, expert craftsmen in this region continue to produce fine pieces of telkari.
In ornaments derived from Phoenician sites, such as Cyprus and Sardinia, patterns of gold wire are laid down with great delicacy on a gold ground, but the art was advanced to its highest perfection in the Greek and Etruscan filigree of the 6th to the 3rd centuries BC. A number of earrings and other personal ornaments found in central Italy are preserved in the Louvre and in the British Museum. Almost all of them are made of filigree work. Some earrings are in the form of flowers of geometric design, bordered by one or more rims each made up of minute volutes of gold wire, and this kind of ornament is varied by slight differences in the way of disposing the number or arrangement of the volutes. But the feathers and petals of modern Italian filigree are not seen in these ancient designs. Instances occur, but only rarely, in which filigree devices in wire are self-supporting and not applied to metal plates.[3]
The museum of the Hermitage at Saint Petersburg contains a large collection of Scythian jewellery from the tombs of the Crimea. Many bracelets and necklaces in that collection are made of twisted wire, some in as many as seven rows of plaiting, with clasps in the shape of heads of animals of beaten work. Others are strings of large beads of gold, decorated with volutes, knots and other patterns of wire soldered over the surfaces.[6] In the British Museum a sceptre, probably that of a Greek priestess, is covered with plaited and netted gold wipe, finished with a sort of Corinthian capital and a boss of green glass.[3]
Asia
It is probable that in
Cuttack, of the eastern Indian state Odisha, features traditional filigree work Known as tarakasi in the Odia language, most filigree work revolves around images of deities, though due to lack of patronage and modern design ideas, it is a dying art. Also noted is silver filigree of Karimnagar in Telangana state.[7]
Medieval Europe
Passing to later times, there are in many collections of medieval jewel work
In the north of Europe, the
Irish filigree work of the Insular period is more thoughtful in design and more extremely varied in pattern. The Royal Irish Academy in Dublin contains a number of reliquaries and personal jewels, of which filigree is the general and most remarkable ornament. The Tara Brooch, in the National Museum of Ireland, has been copied and imitated numerous since the mid 19th century; Queen Victoria had a copy made in the late 1840s.[8][9] Instead of fine curls or volutes of gold thread, Irish filigree is varied by numerous designs by which one thread can be traced through curious knots and complications, which, disposed over large surfaces, balance one another, but always with special varieties and arrangements difficult to trace with the eye. The long thread appears and disappears without breach of continuity, the two ends generally worked into the head and the tail of a serpent or a monster.[10]
The reliquary containing the "Bell of
Much of the medieval jewel work all over Europe down to the 15th century, on reliquaries, crosses, croziers, and other ecclesiastical goldsmiths' work, is set off with bosses and borders of filigree. Filigree work in silver was practised by the Moors of Spain during the Middle Ages with great skill, and was introduced by them and established all over the Iberian Peninsula, hence it was carried to the Spanish colonies in America.[11]
The manufacture spread over the
Silver filigree brooches and buttons are also made in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Little chains and pendants are added to much of this northern work.[11]
Iberian Peninsula
The oldest filigree pieces discovered in the Iberian Peninsula date back to 2000–2500 BC, but its origin is not clear.[13] These pieces possibly belonged to merchants and navigators originally from the Middle East and are not thought to have been produced in the region at that time. Filigree began to be produced in Portugal in the 8th century with the arrival of Arab migrants, who brought new patterns with them. With time, the peninsula began to produce different filigree patterns, but while in Spain the filigree jewellery-making tradition became less relevant, in Portugal it was perfected. After the 18th century, Portuguese Filigree already had its own distinctive imagery, motifs and shapes. Filigree from the 17th and 18th centuries became famous for their extraordinary complexity.[14] Gold and silver filigree jewellery of delicate and artistic design is still made in considerable quantities throughout the country, particularly filigree hearts, which are iconic symbols of Portuguese jewellery-making.
Africa
Filigree work was brought to Great Britain from Abyssinia after the Battle of Magdala: armguards, slippers, and cups, some of which are now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. They are made of thin plates of silver, over which the wirework is soldered. The filigree is subdivided by narrow borders of simple pattern, and the intervening spaces are made up of many patterns, some with grains set at intervals.[11]
Methods of fabrication and uses
The art may be said to consist in curling, twisting and plaiting fine pliable threads of metal, and uniting them at their points of contact with each other, and with the ground, by means of flux such as borax, by the help of the blowpipe.[11] When granulated motifs are desired, small beads are made traditionally by using precious metal wire or fine sheet to start with, which is cut up in small pieces mixed with flux and placed in the small holes of a pitted block of charcoal (or any other suitable refractory material) and are then melted with a blowpipe (or today with a blowtorch), after which the bits of wire curl up and take a natural spherical like shape to end up in minuscule grains which slightly differ one from the other.[15][16] Small grains or beads of the same metals are often set in the eyes of volutes, on the junctions, or at intervals at which they will set off the wirework effectively. The more delicate work is generally protected by framework of stouter wire.[11]
Metaphorical uses
"Filigree" has been used metaphorically as a term for intricate
See also
References
- ^ "filigree". Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 2022-08-17.
- ^ "filigree (n.)". Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved 2022-08-17.
- ^ a b c d e f g Chisholm 1911, p. 343.
- ^ Castellani, Alessandro (1861). A Memoir on the Jewellery of the Ancients. Jackson and Keeson.
- NTV(in Turkish). 10 December 2023. Retrieved 26 March 2024.
- ^ See the "Antiquites du Bosphore Cimmerien", by Gille, 1854; reissued by S. Reinach, 1892, which contains careful engravings of these objects.
- ^ "Arts & Crafts : Wisps of silver". The Hindu. 2004-11-11. Archived from the original on 2007-08-24. Retrieved 2013-02-07.
- ISBN 978-0-7141-2836-8
- ^ Carew, Mairead. "British Jewish leaders searched for the Ark of the Covenant at Tara". IrishCentral, 7 February 2017. Retrieved 28 July 2022
- ^ Chisholm 1911, pp. 343–344.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Chisholm 1911, p. 344.
- JSTOR 30079267.
- ^ FiligranaPortuguesa. "A Filigrana". FiligranaPortuguesa (in European Portuguese). Retrieved 2018-03-12.
- ^ examples in the Victoria and Albert Museum
- ISBN 9780486227023.
- ISBN 9780520036017.
- ^ *Elements of a German filigree button, made c. 1880 image from Victoria & Albert Museum jewellery collection
Bibliography
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Filigree". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 10 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 343–344. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the