FILIGREE (ante). This art may be said to consist in curling, twisting, and plait ing fine pliable threads of metal, and uniting them at their points of contact with gold or silver solder and borax, by the help of the blow-pipe. 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 effectively set off the wire-work. The more delicate tracery is generally pro tected by framework of stouter wire. Brooches, crosses, ear-rings, and other personal ornaments of modern filigree are usually surrounded and subdivided by bands of square or flat metal, giving consistency to the filling up, which would not otherwise keep its proper shape. Probably the oldest existing jewel work is that which has been found by Belzoni, Wilkinson, Mariette, and other Egyptian discoverers in the tombs of Thebes and similar places, in which filigree forms an important feature of the ornamentation. Amongst the jewelry now in the British museum, and in the Louvre in Paris, are exam ples of the round plaited gold chains of tine wire., such as are still made by the filigree workers of India, and known as Trichinopoly chains. From some of these are hung smaller chains of finer wire, with minute fishes and other pendants fastened to them. Most of the rings found in these collections are whipped with gold wire soldered to the hoop. The Greek and Etruscan filigree of about 3,000 years ago is of extraordinary fineness and perfect execution. A number of ear-rings and other personal ornaments found in central Italy are preserved in the Campana collection of the Louvre and amongst the gems of the British museum. Almost all of them are made of filigree. Some ear-rings arc 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. In many ear-rings, chains hang from the upper part, and tiny birds, such as doves or peacocks, covered with enamel, are set amongst these hanging ornaments. Other Etruscan ear-rings are short tubes of gold, half or three quarters of an inch long by half an inch or less in diameter, with a plate of gold attached to the side, and the whole surface covered with filigree soldered on in minute patterns. Many rings resemble fishes with the tails in their mouths, made up of thin plates of gold and wire work of the same metal. A beautiful collection of antique examples of Greek jewelry found in the Chersonese and along the coast of Asia Minor was placed, before the Crimean war, in a museum at Kertch. Many bracelets and necklaces in that collection are made of twisted wire, some ha 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, with grains of gold, or with volutes and knots of wire soldered over the surface. In the British museum a scepter, probably that of a Greek priestess, is covered with plaited and netted gold wire, finished with a sort of Corinthian capital and a boss of green glass. It is probable that in India and various parts of central Asia filigree has been worked from the most remote period without any change in the designs. Whether the Asiatic jew elers were influenced by the Greeks settled on that continent, or merely trained under traditions held in common with them, it is certain that the Indian filigree Workers retain the same patterns as those of the ancient Greeks, and work them in the same way, down to the present day. Wandering workmen are given so much gold, coined or rough, which is weighed, heated in a pan of charcoal, beaten into wire, and then worked in the courtyard or veranda of the employer's house, according to the designs of the artist, who weighs the complete work on restoring it, and is paid at a specified rate for his labor. Very fine grains or beads and spines of gold, scarcely thicker than a coarse hair, projecting from plates of gold are methods of ornamentation still used. This work requires the utmost delicacy of hand, and is of extraordinary richness of effect. Signor Castellani, the modern Ccilini of Italy, who has made the unique filigree of the Etrus cans and Greeks his special study, found it for a long time impossible to revive this particular process of delicate soldering; but the difficulty has been overcome at last. Passing to later times, we may notice in many collections of mediaeval jewel work, reli quaries, covers for the gospels, etc., made either in Constantinople from the 6th to the
12th c., or in monasteries in Europe, in which Byzantine goldsmiths' work was studied and imitated. These objects, besides being enriched with precious stones, polished but not cut into facets, and with enamel, are often decorated with filigree. Large surfaces of gold are sometimes covered with scrolls of filigree soldered on; and corner pieces of the border of book covers, or the panels of reliquaries, are not unfrequently made up of complicated pieces of plaited work alternating with spaces incrusted with enamel. Byzantine filigree work occasionally has small stones set amongst the curves or knots. In the n. of Europe, the Saxons, Britons, and Celts were from an early period skillful in several kinds of goldsmiths' work. As early as the middle of the 5th c., the brooches and other personal ornaments of the "Littus Saxonicum " in England were encrusted with enamel work varied with borders or centers of filigree. The Irish filigree work is more thoughtful in design and more varied in pattern than that of any period or country that could be named. It reached its highest perfection, according to Dr. Petrie, in the 10th and '11th centuries. The royal Irish academy in Dublin contains a number of reliquaries and personal jewels, of which filigree is the general mid most remarkable ornament. The "Tara" brooch has been copied and imitated, and the shape and deco ration of it are well known, Instead of fine curls or volutes of gold thread, the Irish filigree is Varied by numerous designs, in 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 threads appear and disappear without breach of continuity, the two ends generally worked into the head and tail of a serpent or a monster. The reliquary containing the " bell of St. Patrick " is covered with knotted work in many varieties. A two-handled chalice, called the "Ardagh cup," found near Limerick a few years since, has belts, bosses at the junctions of the handles, and the whole lining of the foot ornamented with work of this kind of extraordinary fineness. The late lord Dunraven numbers forty varieties of pattern of this cup alone. Much of the mediaeval jewel work all over Europe clown to the 15th c., on reliquaries, crosses, crosiers, and other ecclesiastical goldsmiths' work, is set off with bosses and borders of filigree. Filigree in silver was practiced by the Moors of Spain during the middle ages with great skill, and was intro duced by them and established all over the peninsula, where silver filigree jewelry of delicate and artistic design is still made in considerable quantities. The manufacture spread over the Balearic islands, and among the populations that border the Mediter ranean, and continues all over Italy, and in Albania, the Ionian islands, and many other parts of Greece. That of the Greeks is sometimes on a large scale, with several thick nesses of wire alternating with larger and smaller bosses and beads, sometimes set with turquoises, etc., and mounted on convex plates, making rich ornamental head-pieces, belts, and breast ornaments. Filigree silver buttons of wire-work and small bosses are worn by the peasants in most of the countries that produce this kind of jewelry. Sil ver filigree brooches and buttons are made also in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Little chains and pendants are added to much of this northern work. Beautiful speci mens have been contributed to the various international exhibitions. Some very curi ous filigree was brought from Abyssinia after the capture of l+rIagclala—arm guards, slip pers, cups, etc. They are made of thin plates of silver, over which the wire-work is soldered. Filigree is subdivided by narrow borders of simple pattern, and the inter vening spaces are made up of many patterns, some with grains set at intervals. Great interest has been felt in the revival of the designs of antique jewelry by Signor Castel lani. Ile collected examples of the peasant jewelry still made in many provinces of Italy on extraordinary designs preserved from a remote antiquity. Most of the decora tion is in filigree of many varieties. It was in part through the help of workmen in, remote villages, who retained the use of variouskinds 0 solders, long forgotten else.
where, that the fine reproductions of antique gold filigree have been so beautifully executed in Italy, and by Italian jewelers.--[From Ency. Brit., 9th ed.]