Silversmithing
Silversmithing is the ancient art of creating a three dimensional form from a flat sheet of metal. The form is raised by hammers over steel stakes. ‘Dutch raising’ is a lesser known technique that starts to raise from the outside edge adding extra raising courses behind each course working backwards towards the centre. This technique has the benefit of controlling better the final diameter of the work and uses thinner gauges of metal. For more information about Dutch Raising, please read the journal article The Mystery of Dutch Raising (PDF) published by the Silver Society
In 2019 I was able to bring Hammerclub The European Silversmiths Forum to the newly opened V&A Dundee. The theme of the symposium and exhibition was Renewal inspired by the regeneration of the 2019 host city Dundee, the UK’s only UNESCO City of Design and home to the V&A Dundee design museum. Featuring seventy two selected silversmithing works by artists from twelve different countries, the event explored renewal through innovation and new technologies, the re-use of materials, new designs for familiar objects, the reinvention of traditions and techniques, development of form through repetition of shape or action, and renewal within nature.
Dr Emilia Ferraro (an Anthropologist) and I have also involved in a research project with the British Museum Endangered Material Knowledge Programme (EMKP) recording traditional silvermsithing techniques in Ecuador - Keeping the Hammers Voice Alive. Ecuadorian silversmithing knowledge is a hybrid system produced by the colonial encounter, but its ancient pre-Hispanic roots are still traceable within contemporary practice. Andean metallurgy was colour and surface-oriented; it developed around cultural understandings of the inherent properties of metals which were embedded within specific objects through techniques and alloys that conveyed such meanings onto their surfaces. The unique Ecuadorian silversmithing method creates vessels by hammering “from the inside” and from the centre towards the maker. It has clear pre-Hispanic origins, as descriptions of this process can be found in some of the first European chroniclers’ writings. The inside was perceived as the source of all life and technique was ultimately determined by the worldview of the metalworkers. Some have referred to this approach to silversmithing as the ‘feminine’ method. A searchable digital repository has been created within the British Museum website and documents nearly 600 images and videos of technique, including ‘hammering from the inside’, chasing and repousse, metal colouring, gilding and casting.
