Silversmiths and Goldsmiths Work

SILVERSMITHS' AND GOLDSMITHS' WORK. Per sonal ornaments, utensils, vases, decorative objects, etc., made of silver or gold, with their various alloys, are generally known as silversmiths' and goldsmiths' work. The article that follows is treated historically under the following divisions: Egyptian to Roman, with Jewellery included in a separate section; European; North and South America; Oriental Work. (See also EGYPT : Art and Archaeology; INDIAN AND SINHALESE ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY; ROMAN ART; BYZANTINE ART; BRONZE; IRON IN ART ; DRINKING VESSELS ; JEWELLERY.) Gold, silver and their natural or artificial mixture called electrum m. white gold, were worked in ancient Greece and Italy for per sonal ornaments, for vessels, arrows and weapons, for coinage, and for inlaid and plated decoration of baser metals. Pliny notes that gold is generally found mixed with silver, and says that when the proportion of silver amounted to one-fifth the alloy was called electrum. The source of native electrum was the river Pactolus in Lydia, whose golden sands supplied the fabulous wealth of Croesus. Aegean lands were rich in precious metals. The consid erable deposits of treasure found in the earliest prehistoric strata on the site of Troy are generally assigned to the second city ; they tre earlier than the sixth ("Homeric") city, and are not likely to be later than 2000 B.C. The largest of them, the so-called Treasure of Priam, is a representative collection of jewels and plate. The gold ornaments were packed in a large silver cup. They consist of elaborate diadems or pectorals, six bracelets, 6o earrings or hair-rings, and nearly 9,00o beads. The Trojan vases have bold and simple forms, mostly without ornament, but some are lightly fluted. Many are wrought from single sheets of metal. The char acteristic handle is a heavy rolled loop soldered or rivetted to the body. Some silver flasks with inverted cup-covers have small shoulder-studs pierced vertically for hanging. Bases are some times round or pointed, sometimes fitted with separate collars, but more often slightly cupped to make a low ring-foot. An odd shape in gold is an oval bowl or cup with a broad lip at each end and two large roll-handles in the middle. The oval body has Sumerian affinities, and it seems likely that Trojan arts at this time were Asiatic rather than European. Asiatic influence had in deed invaded Europe, for the oval shape occurs in the contempo rary pottery of the Greek mainland and islands (Helladic and Cycladic). A plain spouted bowl of usual early Helladic shape in the Louvre is the typical specimen of goldsmith's work from pre Mycenaean Greece, and the scarcity of precious metals points to lack of wealth as prime cause of the artistic backwardness of these regions. Silver seems to have been more plentiful in the Cyclades, but only a few simple vessels, head-bands, pins and rings survive. Conditions were different in Crete.

Minoan and Mycenaean.

A profusion of gold jewellery was found in early Minoan burials at Mochlos, three silver dagger blades come from a communal tomb at Kumasa, and silver seals and ornaments of the same age are not uncommon. An elegant silver cup from Gournia belongs to the next epoch (Middle Minoan I., c. 2000 B.C.) ; it is unique, but numerous imitations of its cusped and carinated form in clay, and of its metallic sheen in glazed and painted decoration, prove that such vessels were com mon. Minoan plate and jewellery are amply represented in the wealth of the mainland tombs at Mycenae and Vaphio. The vases from Mycenae are made indifferently of silver, gold and bronze; but gold is generally reserved for drinking-cups, small phials and boxes; silver is used for jugs as well. Much of the funeral furni ture is gold, notably the masks that hid the faces or adorned the coffins of the dead. It has been thought that the small gold discs, which Schliemann found in prodigious quantities (700 in one grave), were nailed on wooden coffins, but they may have been sewn on clothes. They are impressed with geometrical designs based on circular and spiral figures, stars and rosettes and natural forms such as leaves, butterflies and octopods. Smaller bossed discs bearing similar patterns may be button-covers. Models of shrines and other amulets are also made of gold. A splendid piece of plate is a silver counterpart of the black steatite liba tion-vase from Knossos in the form of a bull's head, with gold horns, a gold rosette on the forehead, gold-plated muzzle, ears and eyes. The gold here and in other Mycenaean plating is not laid on the silver, but on inserted copper strips. The gold cups from Mycenae are of two main types : plain curved or carinated forms related to the silverware and pottery of Troy, and embossed conical vessels of the Minoan tradition. Some of the plain pieces have handles ending in animals' heads, which bite the rim or peer into the cup. The embossed ornament consists of vertical and horizontal bands of rosettes and spiral coils, floral, foliate, marine and animal figures. The designs are beaten through the walls and are consequently visible on the insides of the vessels; but the finest examples of their class, the two gold cups from the Vaphio tomb near Sparta, have a plain gold lining which overlaps the embossed sides at the lip. The reliefs on the Vaphio cups represent men handling wild and domesticated cattle among trees in a rocky landscape. The handles show the typical Minoan form : two horizontal plates rivetted to the body at one end and joined at the other by a vertical cylinder. Steatite vases carved with similar pictorial reliefs were evidently made to imitate em bossed gold. A fragment found at Palaikastro had part of its original plating attached.