Filigree Design in jewellery
Filigree is a type of design used in a delicate kind of jewellery design in metal such as gold and silver. Filigree made with tiny beads and twisted threads sometime both in combination, soldered together in the surface of an object of the metal and arranged in artistic work. It is popular in Indian and other Asian metalwork. It was also famous in Italian, French and Portuguese metalwork from the 19th century. Filigree design has a special branch of jewellery .In recent times, it was historically part of the work of the jeweler.
History
In ancient Mesopotamia identify that filigree was carved into the jewelry since 3,000 BC. Specifically in Mardin Province in Mesopotamia. In 15th century, a new form developed in filigree design using silver and gold wires, known as “telkari”. Today jeweler used expert artisans to produce fine pieces of telkari.
The Egyptian jewelers take help of wire to lay down on a background and to plait. With the exception of chains filigree work was practiced. Their strength lay in cloisonné work and the molded ornaments. Many examples like gold necklace designs using fine wire are made by the filigree workers of India. In ornaments derived from Cyprus and Sardinia, patterns of gold wire are laid down on the gold ground, the art was its highest perfection in the Greek filigree of the 6th century. A number of earrings, gold finger rings designs for female and other personal ornaments found in the Louvre (Italy) and in the British Museum. Almost all of them are design of filigree work. The feathers and petals of Italian filigree design are not in the use in ancient designs.
Asia
In India and various parts of central Asia filigree work are from the remote period without any change in the designs. The Greeks influenced the Asiatic jewellery but Indian filigree workers retain the same patterns of the ancient Greeks work. workmen are given gold, which is weighed, heated, beaten into wire, and then worked in the courtyard of the employer’s house according to the designs given by the artist.
Cuttack a city in the eastern Indian, represented the traditional filigree work called as tarakasi in the Odia language. Tarakasi work revolves around images of deities due to lack of modern design ideas it is a dying art.
Method of Fabrication
The art is consist in curling, twisting and plaiting fine threads of metal such as gold and silver, uniting them at the points of contact and attached with the ground in the flux by the help of the blowpipe. Small beads are made by using metal wire or fine sheet which is cut up in small pieces mixed with flux and set in the holes of a pitted block of charcoal and melted. After the bits of wire curl up and take a natural spherical shape to complete in minuscule grains which differ one from the other. The delicate work is normally protected by framework of stouter wire.
Filigree jewelry design have an application in other metal-work like iron hanging wall brackets and doors.
