Antiquity
Pre-Mycenaean
Silver has been used in ancient Greece and Italy for personal ornaments, vases, jewelry, arrows, weapons and coins. It 'been gilded and inlaid. It 'was also mixed with gold to produce gold and white mixed with base metals.
Examples of antique jewelry were found in the tomb of Queen Pu-abi at Ur in Sumeria (now the top-Muqayyar), by the year 3000 see Chr. In the crypt the queen body was covered with ornaments of gold, silver,Lapis lazuli, carnelian, agate and chalcedony beads.
Aegean lands were rich in precious metals. The deposits of great treasure in the earliest prehistoric strata on the site of Troy are not likely to be found by 2000 BC. The largest of them, called Treasure of Priam, was a silver trophy with gold ornaments consisting of elaborate diadems or pectorals, six bracelets, 60 earrings or hair rings, and nearly 9,000 beads. Silver was used extensively in the Greek islands, however,a few simple vessels, rings, brooches, belts and survive.
Minoan and Mycenaean.
Three silver dagger blades were found in a mass grave in Kumasa.Silver seals and ornaments of the same age, even in these regions. A silver cup found in Gournia dates to about 2000. Some vases and silver are also jugsfrom Mycenae. Some of the Mycenaean blades are bronze inlaid with
Gold, silver, niello and electrons.
Bronze to the Iron Age
Engraved andembossed silver bowls made by Phoenicians were found in Greece. Most of them have developed projects pictorial Egyptian or Assyrian character and thus probably foreign to Greece.
But some simple, decorated with rows of flowers and animals, can hardly be distinguished from the early Greek products. A silver bowl throughout the fifth century BC found InThe Metropolitan Museum of Art displays a refined grain.
Silver vessels and toiletrieswere found next to the bronze, the most common in Etruscan tombs. For example, a powder box dating from the hunted to the 4 th Century BC Metropolitan Museum of Art
Roman
During the fourth century BC, has been a tendency to decorate silver vessels with relief revived. This type of work, elaborated in the Hellenistic period and especially in Antioch and Alexandria, remained the usual method of decorating silver articles until the end of the Roman Empire.
Many Roman silver was buriedover the centuries violent past of the ancient world. The largest, Boscoreale treasure (mostly in the Louvre), was inadvertently stored
same volcanic eruption that destroyed Herculaneum and killed Pliny in AD 79. A little 'smaller treasure at Hildesheim (now in Berlin) is also the first imperial period. The acquisition and appreciation of silver plate was a kind of cult in Rome. Technical names for various types of relief
were in general use (emblems, seals, shellfish).Weights were recorded and compared, and often exaggerated. Large quantities of gold bullion came to Rome from their battle victories in Greece and Asia in the second century BC.
Early Christian and Byzantine
The most ancient silver-Christian pagan looks at the work time, using the techniques of embossing and chasing. The classic design is at times decorated with pagan scenes.
Most silver is in Syria, Egypt, Cyprus, Asia Minor was found, andRussia. It is mostly chalices, bowls, candlesticks and bowls and plates. The techniques of stamping and hunting have often been used, but the abstract patterns and Christian symbols inlaid in niello were also used. The 6 th and 7 Century saw the emergence of imperial control stamps - a precursor of the brand.
Middle Ages
Carolingian and Ottonian
8 of the last quarter century, focuses on design
the human figure and use of niello (chip-carvingTechnology.)
Examples are the Tassilo Chalice (umlnster Abbey, Austria) and the Lindau Gospels book cover (Pierpont Morgan Library, New York).
The most influential design of silver was of royalty or subject to the order given church.Liturgical plate and reliquaries, crosses and altar no fundamental change; Ottonian of work after 10 and 11 centuries that the 9 only be distinguished in style development. For example, the largest, most massiveFigures, because of their rigid pattern of folds on the golden altar (c. 1023) by Henry II in Basel
Minster (Musée de Cluny, Paris), significant differences compared to the nervous system, elongated figures of the Carolingian period.
Romanesque
In the 12 th Century, the church was the principal patron, and the work was done in the larger monasteries. Under the guidance of men of the Church as big as Henry, bishop of Winchester, and Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis, near Paris,Emphasis was placed on the matter and symbolism.
Gold and silver remain as rich glazes settings as part of portable altars, or small devotional diptychs and triptychs shrines and images, are used as the shrine of St. Heribert in Deutz (c. 1160) and Nicholas
Verdun Shrine of the Three Kings at Cologne (c. 1200).
The growing naturalism of the 13 Century, in the work of the successor of Nicholas', Hugo d'Oignies, whose reliquary for the rib of considerableSt. Peter at Namur (1228) anticipates the relics of the crystal in which the freestanding relic is exposed to the view of the believer, is decorated with Hugo
particularly filigree and enriched by naturalistic cutout leaves and little cast animals and birds.
The increasing wealth of the royal courts, nobility, and later by traders led to the establishment of secular workshops in major cities and the establishment of confraternities, or guilds, theSilversmiths, the first one in Paris in 1202
The late Gothic period saw an increase in silver production due to the rise of the secular middle classes. The Mazers English (cups with wooden supports of silver) and the silver spoon with a variety of finials are examples of this dish humble. Numerous large reliquaries and altar
Plate of all kinds were still produced. At the end of the Middle Ages the style of these pieces of sheet metal and developed over centuriesnationalcharacteristics characteristic, strongly influenced by architectural style: in England, by the geometric patterns of the perpendicular, and Germany, followed by a serious and
Baroque exuberance almost bizarre themes, and France, for the elegance of the Flamboyant fragile.
The purity standards of silver became rigorously controlled, and "punch" has been applied, the marking of silver in England, in particular, has been carefully observed.
In the Far East were the skills of thesilversmithunsurpassed as a cup is made of solid silver (the photos are 4x magnification of the original) about 1398 in Kampochea (Cambodia), in wars with neighboring rulers of Thailand.
Islam
The use of gold and silver in Islamic countries has been limited, because it was forbidden by the Koran. Despite the ban
has often been ignored, the great value of these objects led to their early destruction and melting. Islamic Jewelry in the first period is therefore extremelyrare, represented only by a couple of things, such as buckles and bracelets from the Mongol period, and pieces like a silver case Gerona in Spain and Berlin silver tankard of the 13 th Century, with animal friezes in relief carvings.
Renaissance to Modern
Century 16
With the silver from the Americas New Spanish silversmiths, Platería, gave its name to the heavily ornamented style plateresque time. England was also abundant in the 16 century secular silver,but flat church was destroyed, especially during the Reformation.
Baroque
Huguenot silversmiths who left France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 set new standards of taste and craftsmanship, where they settled - especially in England, where the name of the line late 17 and early 18 century were French origin: Pierre Harache, Pierre Platel, David Willaume, Simon Pantin, Paul de Lamerie, Paul Crespin, only mobile few.Silver, aCharacteristic of the rooms was at Versailles, became fashionable among aristocrats and Photography. It 'was built by silver plates
a wooden frame. Each suite includes a dressing table, a man and a pair of candlesticks glasss. In France such furniture did not survive the Revolution, but much remains in England, Denmark, Germany and Russia.
In the Far East, Chinese silversmiths produced some of the most elegant and well-made silver jewelry, some of which wasExports to the Russian law.
Century 18
In early 18 th century English work combined functional simplicity with grace of form, while the work of Dutch and German goldsmiths is in a similar style, but less pleasing proportions. The success of the English work, but
is partly due to the destruction of only a fraction of French silver in the same period. Silver in the 18 Century English classic by Robert and James Adam is of unequal merit with the use ofindustrial methods of some important producers.
Colonial America
Silversmithing in the New World during the colonial period is mainly from England. In North America, first in New England by English craftsmen brought Century 17. The most important centers of Boston, Newport, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Annapolis. Collections Mabel Brady Garvan except as the collection at Yale University and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts,American
A wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the North American colonial silver stands out for its simplicity and graceful forms, copied or adapted from English silver of the time. Meanwhile, the colonial silver of Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Chile and Bolivia
while the concept mainly Spanish, shows a set of styles and forms Iberian, with indigenous influences that date back to pre-Hispanic times. Most of these relics survive inChurches as sacramental vessels.
Century 19
Fashion French Empire of Napoleon brought to the fore once again and follow the on the Continent. England has created its own stronger version of the Empire style Victorian style.A recognizable, in particular high quality buttons, coins, silver and Sheffield developed
Platt, creating new standards of design and management and employee benefits. This was associated with the rebirth of the craft, followedwith William Morris and the distinctive style of Art Nouveau.
Modern
Factories built with modern equipment - for example, processing of laser-punching, pressing, stamping and mechanical polishing - account. These factories supply nearly all
High Street jewelers. The development of the style is now determined by the buying public. Little has changed in the design of gold engagement or wedding rings however fashion demands have created an environment have changed the most vibrantThe drawings are often responsible for jewelry and silver.
In Paris, designs by René Lalique inspired Art Nouveau, in Moscow, while Peter Carl Faberge to an excellent quality craftsmanship for small ornaments. Georg Jensen in Denmark has reached, with Johan Rohde and others not only an individual style, but the Danish built several factories with branches all over the world, proving that good modern design in silver
Jewellery should not be limited to artists'Studios.
