Copper Alloy Brass Dooor Fittings Seljuk Museum of Islamic Art Qatar

Black mixture of copper, silver, and lead sulphides

Byzantine gold ring with niello inscription "Lord help Leontius, Patrician and Count of purple Obsikion guarded by God", c. k Advertizement

Niello is a black mixture, usually of sulphur, copper, silver, and atomic number 82,^[1] used as an inlay on engraved or etched metal, especially silver. It is added as a powder or paste, then fired until it melts or at least softens, and flows or is pushed into the engraved lines in the metal. It hardens and blackens when cool, and the niello on the flat surface is polished off to show the filled lines in black, contrasting with the polished metal (usually silver) effectually it.^[2] It may also be used with other metalworking techniques to comprehend larger areas, every bit seen in the sky in the diptych illustrated here. The metallic where niello is to be placed is often roughened to provide a key. In many cases, particularly in objects that have been cached underground, where the niello is now lost, the roughened surface indicates that it was once there.

Statistical consideration [edit]

Niello was used on a variety of objects including sword hilts, chalices, plates, horns, adornment for horses, jewellery such as bracelets, rings, pendants, and pocket-sized fittings such as strap-ends, handbag-bars, buttons, belt buckles and the like.^[3] Information technology was also used to fill in the letters in inscriptions engraved on metallic. Periods when engraving filled in with niello has been used to make full images with figures accept been relatively few, but include some significant achievements. In ornament, it came to have contest from enamel, with far wider color possibilities, which eventually displaced it in near of Europe.

The proper noun derives from the Latin nigellum for the substance,^[4] or nigello or neelo, the medieval Latin for blackness.^[5] Though historically most common in Europe, it is besides known from many parts of Asia and the Near Eastward.^[6]

Bronze Age [edit]

Particular of the bronze "Lion Chase Dagger" with niello, gilded and silver from Grave Circle A, Mycenae, c. 1550 BC.^[7]

At that place are a number of claimed uses of niello from the Mediterranean Statuary Age, all of which have been the subjects of disputes as to the bodily composition of the materials used, that accept not been conclusively settled, despite some decades of contend. The earliest claimed utilise of niello appears in late Bronze Age Byblos in Syria, around 1800 BC, in inscriptions in hieroglyphs on scimitars.^[8] In Ancient Arab republic of egypt information technology appears a picayune later on, in the tomb of Queen Ahhotep II, who lived most 1550 BC, on a dagger decorated with a lion chasing a calf in a rocky landscape in a style that shows Greek influence, or at to the lowest degree similarity to the roughly contemporary daggers from Mycenae, and perhaps other objects in the tomb.^[9]

History [edit]

At nigh the same time of c.1550 BC information technology appears on several bronze daggers from shaft grave royal tombs at Mycenae (in Grave Circumvolve A and Grave Circle B), especially in long thin scenes running forth the middle of the blade. These show the violence typical of the art of Mycenaean Greece, as well as a sophistication in both technique and figurative imagery that is startlingly original in a Greek context. There are a number of scenes of lions hunting and being hunted, attacking men and being attacked; near are now in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens.^[10]

These are in a mixed-media technique ofttimes chosen metalmalerei (German: "painting in metal"), which involves using aureate and silver inlays or practical foils with black niello and the bronze, which would originally have been brightly polished. Also as providing a black colour, the niello was likewise used as the agglutinative to agree the thin gold and silver foils in place.^[11]

Byblos in Syria, where niello offset appears, was something of an Egyptian outpost on the Levant, and many scholars think that it was highly-skilled metalworkers from Syria who introduced the technique to both Egypt and Mycenaean Hellenic republic. The iconography can about easily exist explained past some combination of influence from the broader traditions of Mesopotamian art where somewhat comparable imagery had been produced for over a thousand years in cylinder seals and the like, and some (such every bit the physique of the figures) from Minoan art, although no early niello has been found on Crete.^[12]

A busy metal cup, the "Enkomi Loving cup" from Cyprus has as well been claimed to use niello decoration. However, controversy has continued since the 1960s equally to whether the textile used on all these pieces actually is niello, and a succession of increasingly sophisticated scientific tests have failed to provide evidence of the presence of the sulpherous compounds which define niello.^[xiii] Information technology has been suggested that these artefacts, or at least the daggers, utilize in fact a technique of patinated metal that may be the same every bit the Corinthian bronze known from ancient literature, and is similar to the Japanese Shakudō.^[14]

Roman, Byzantine and medieval [edit]

Niello is and so hardly found until the Roman menses; or perhaps it outset appears around this signal.^[15] Pliny the Elder (Ad 23–79) describes the technique as Egyptian, and remarks the oddness of decorating silverish in this manner.^[16] Some of the earliest uses, from 1–300 Advertizement, seem to exist small statuettes and brooches of big cats, where niello is used for the stripes of tigers and the spots on panthers; these were very common in Roman art, as creatures of Bacchus. The animate being repertoire of Roman Great britain was somewhat different, and provides brooches with niello stripes on a hare and a true cat.^[17] From well-nigh the 4th century, information technology was used for ornamental details such every bit borders and for inscriptions in late Roman silver, such as a dish and bowl in the Mildenhall Treasure and pieces in the Hoxne Hoard, including Christian church plate. Information technology was often used on spoons, which were often inscribed with the owner's name, or later crosses. This blazon of use continued in Byzantine metalwork, from where it passed to Russia.

Information technology is very common in Anglo-Saxon metalwork, with examples including the Tassilo Beaker, Strickland Brooch, and the Fuller Brooch,^[18] generally forming the background for motifs carried in the metal, but also used for rather rough geometric ornamentation of spots, triangles and stripes on small relatively everyday fittings such as strap-ends in base metal. There is similar utilize in Celtic, Viking, and other types of Early Medieval jewellery and metalwork, particularly in northern Europe.^[nineteen] Like uses continued in the traditional styles of jewellery of the Center East until at least the 20th century. The Belatedly Roman buckle from Gaul illustrated hither shows a relatively high quality early example of this sort of ornamentation.

In Romanesque art colourful champlevé enamel largely replaced information technology, although it continued to be used for small highlights of decoration, and some high quality Mosan art began to utilise it for small figurative images as part of large pieces, very often applied as plaques. These began to exploit the possibilities of niello for carrying a precise graphic style. The back of the Ottonian Purple Cross (1020s) has outline engravings of figures filled with niello, the black lines forming the figures on a gold background. Later Romanesque pieces began to utilise a more densely engraved manner, where the figures are mostly carried by the polished metallic, against a blackness background. Romanesque champlevé enamel was applied to a cheap copper or copper blend class, which was a great advantage, but for some pieces the prestige of precious metallic was desired, and a small number of nielloed silver pieces from c. 1175–1200 adopt the ornamental vocabulary developed in Limoges enamel.^[20]

A group of high-quality pieces apparently originating in the Rhineland, which utilize both niello and enamel, include what may be the earliest reliquary with scenes of the murder and burial of Thomas Becket, probably from a few years after his death in 1170 (The Cloisters). Eight big nielloed plaques decorate the sides and roof, six with figures seen close-upward at less than half-length, in a very different style from the cruder full-length figures in the many Limoges enamel equivalent reliquaries.^[21]

Gothic fine art from the 13th century continued to develop this pictorial employ of niello, which reached its high point in the Renaissance.^[22] Niello connected to be widely used for simple ornament on small pieces, though at the top end goldsmiths were more probable to use black enamel to fill inscriptions on rings and the like. Niello was also used on plate armour, in this instance over etched steel, as well as weapons.

• 

  Roman brooch in the form of a panther, copper alloy inlaid with argent and niello, 100-300

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  Argent-plated fancy bronze spoon with a panther, Roman, 3rd-4th century, found in France

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  Mountain for Spear Shaft, Late Roman, c. 400

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  Gold Byzantine nuptials band with scenes from the Life of Christ, sixth century

• 

  Niello ornament and inscription on a silver 6th-century liturgical strainer, French republic

• 

  Monogram in the centre of an otherwise plain Byzantine dish, 610-613

• 

  Anglo-Saxon silver strap stop in the Trewhiddle style, now only with traces of niello left. 9th century

• 

  Reliquary Catafalque with Scenes from the Martyrdom of Saint Thomas Becket, c. 1170s, The Cloisters

• 

  Niello-filled paten from Trzemeszno, Poland, fourth quarter of the twelfth century

Renaissance niello [edit]

Some Renaissance goldsmiths in Europe, such equally Maso Finiguerra and Antonio del Pollaiuolo in Florence, decorated their works, commonly in silver, by engraving the metal with a burin, afterwards which they filled up the hollows produced by the burin with a black enamel-like chemical compound fabricated of silver, lead and sulphur. The resulting design, chosen a niello, was of much higher contrast and thus much more visible. Sometimes niello ornament was incidental to the objects, but some pieces such as paxes were finer pictures in niello. A range of religious objects such as crucifixes and reliquaries might be busy in this way, every bit well as secular objects such every bit knife handles, rings and other jewellery, and fittings such as buckles. Information technology appears that niello-piece of work was probably a specialist activity of some goldsmiths, not practiced by others, and most piece of work came from Florence or Bologna.^[23]

Niellists were important in the history of art considering they had developed skills and techniques that transferred hands to engraving plates for printmaking on paper, and nearly all the earliest engravers were trained as goldsmiths, enabling the new art medium to develop very quickly. At to the lowest degree in Italian republic, some of the very earliest engraved prints were in fact made by treating a silvery object intended for niello every bit a printing plate with ink, before the niello was added. These are known as "niello prints", or in the cautious words of mod curators, "printed from a plate engraved in the niello manner";^[24] in later centuries, after a collector's market place grew up, many were forgeries. The 18-carat Renaissance prints were probably made mainly as a record of his piece of work past the goldsmith, and perhaps as contained art objects.^[25]

By the late 16th century relatively little use was made of niello, especially to create pictures, and a different type of mastic that could be used in much the same way for contrasts in ornament was devised, and then European pictorial utilise was largely restricted to Russia, except for some watches, guns, instruments and the like.^[26] Niello has continued to be used sometimes past Western jewellers.

• 

  High german pax, c. 1490, circle of the engraver Martin Schongauer, showing a shut relationship to the printed engraving style.

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  Niello print, 2 inches high, 1500-1520. Orpheus seated and playing his lyre, by Peregrino da Cesena

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  Watch case, London around 1700

Kievan Rus and Russia [edit]

During the tenth to 13th century Advertisement, Kievan Rus craftsmen possessed a high degree of skill in jewellery making. John Tsetses, a twelfth-century Byzantine writer, praised the work of Kievan Rus artisans and likened their work to the creations of Daedalus, the highly skilled craftsman of Greek mythology.

The Kievan Rus technique for niello application was first shaping silvery or gold past repoussé work, embossing, and casting. They would raise objects in loftier relief and fill the background with niello using a mixture of red copper, lead, silvery, potash, borax, sulphur which was liquefied and poured into concave surfaces before beingness fired in a furnace. The heat of the furnace would blacken the niello and make the other ornamentation stand out more vividly.

Nielloed items were mass-produced using moulds that still survive today and were traded with Greeks, the Byzantine Empire, and other peoples that traded forth the trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks.

During the Mongol invasion from 1237 to 1240 Advert, nearly all of Kievan Rus was overrun. Settlements and workshops were burned and razed and most of the craftsmen and artisans were killed. Afterwards, skill in niello and cloisonné enamel diminished greatly. The Ukrainian Museum of Celebrated Treasures, located in Kiev, has a large collection of nielloed items mostly recovered from tombs found throughout Ukraine.^[27]

Later, Veliky Ustyug in N Russia, Tula and Moscow produced high quality pictorial niello pieces such as snuff boxes in contemporary styles such as Rococo and Neoclassicism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries; by then Russian federation was near the only role of Europe regularly using niello in fashionable styles.

• 

  Russian sacrament box; early on 18th century

• 

  Snuffbox with distance-finder, Veliky Ustyug, 1823

• 

  Russian tumbler, 1854

Islamic earth [edit]

Sasanian bowl with niello stripes on tiger, and fruit, 6th or seventh century

Pre-Islamic flow [edit]

Niello was rarely used in Sasanian metalwork, which could use it inventively. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has Sasanian shallow bowls or dishes where in one case information technology forms the stripes on a tiger,^[28] and in another the horns and hoofs of goats in relief, as well every bit parts of the king's weapons. This relief use of niello seems to exist paralleled from this period in but one piece of Byzantine silver.^[29]

Islamic menses [edit]

In the early on Islamic earth silver, though continuing in use for vessels at the courts of princes, was much less widely used by the merely wealthy. Instead, vessels of the copper alloys bronze and contumely included inlays of silver and gilt in their oftentimes elaborate ornamentation, leaving less of a place for niello. Other black fillings were also used, and museum descriptions are frequently vague about the actual substances involved.

The famous "Baptistère de Saint Louis," c. 1300, a Mamluk basin of engraved contumely with gold, silver and niello inlay, which has been in France since at to the lowest degree 1440 (Louis XIII of France and perhaps other kings were baptized in it; now Louvre), is 1 instance where niello is used. Hither niello is the background to the figures and the arabesque decoration effectually them, and used to fill up the lines in both.

Information technology is used on the locking bars of some ivory boxes and caskets, and perhaps continued more than widely in use on weapons, where information technology is certainly found in later centuries from which more than textile survives. It is common in the decoration of the scabbards and hilts of the large daggers called khanjali and qama traditionally carried by all males in the Caucasus region (whether Muslim or Christian). It was as well used to decorate handguns when they came into employ. Until modernistic times relatively elementary niello was common on the jewellery of the Levant, used in much the same way equally in medieval Europe.

• 

  Sasanian dish; the male monarch hunting rams. c. 450-550

• 

  Niello accents on the lock of the ivory "Box of Zamora", 900-964, Al-Andaluz

• 

• 

  15th century box, contumely with silver and niello, perhaps from Egypt

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  16-17th century Ottoman cavalvry shield with niello on central boss

• 

  Ntello ihe top zonarea a helmet from Crimea or Due south Russia, 1818–19

Thai jewellery [edit]

Nielloware jewellery^[xxx] and related items from Thailand were pop gifts from American soldiers taking "R&R" in Thailand to their girlfriends/wives back habitation from the 1930s to the 1970s. Almost of it was completely handmade jewellery.^{[ citation needed ]}

The technique is equally follows: the artisan would cleave a pattern into the argent, leaving the effigy raised by etching out the "background". He would then utilise the niello inlay to fill in the "background". Later on being broiled in an open burn down, the alloy would harden. It would and then exist sanded polish and buffed. Finally, a argent artisan would add minute details by hand. Filigree was ofttimes used for additional ornament. Nielloware is classified as simply being black and silver coloured. Other coloured jewellery originating during this fourth dimension uses a different technique and is not considered niello.^{[ citation needed ]}

Many of the characters shown in nielloware are characters originally found in the Hindu legend Ramayana. The Thai version is called Ramakien. Important Thai cultural symbols were also frequently used.^{[ citation needed ]}

Ingredients and technique [edit]

7th century Anglo-Saxon gold chugalug buckle with discreet niello bringing out the interlace, from Sutton Hoo

Various slightly different recipes are found by modern scientific analysis, and historic accounts. In early periods, niello seems to have been made with a single sulphide, that of the chief metal of the piece, even if it was gold (which would be difficult to handle). Copper sulphide niello has just been found on Roman pieces, and silvery sulphide is used on silvery.^[31] Afterwards a mixture of metals was used; Pliny gives a mixed sulphide recipe with silver and copper, simply seems to have been some centuries ahead of his time, as such mixtures accept non been identified by analysis on pre-medieval pieces. Most Byzantine and early medieval pieces analysed are silverish-copper, while silver-copper-pb pieces appear from about the 11th century onwards.^[32]

The Mappae clavicula of nigh the 9th century, Theophilus Presbyter (1070–1125) and Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571) give detailed accounts, using silvery-copper-lead mixtures with slightly different ratios of ingredients, Cellini using more pb.^[33] Typical ingredients take been described as: "sulfur with several metal ingredients and borax";^[34] "copper, silver, and pb, to which had been added sulphur while the metal was in fluid form ... [the design] was then brushed over with a solution of borax..."^[35]

While some recipes talk of using furnaces and muffles to melt the niello, others just seem to use an open fire. The necessary temperatures vary with the mixture; overall argent-copper-lead mixtures are easier to use. All mixtures have the aforementioned black advent after work is completed.^[36]

Run across besides [edit]

• Damascening
• Yemenite silversmithing (carries a full description on how niello was practical to jewellery in Yemen)

Notes [edit]

1. ^ Ingredients vary; see beneath
2. ^ Levinson, 528; Craddock
3. ^ Levinson, 528; Osborne, 595
4. ^ Levinson, 528
5. ^ Osborne, 594
6. ^ Osborne, 595
7. ^ NAMA 394, full image
8. ^ Smith and Stevenson, 114
9. ^ Smith and Stevenson, 114 (the identity of the queen in this burial has undergone revision in contempo decades); Lucas and Harris, 250–251 for a more sceptical account.
10. ^ Thomas, 178–182; Dickinson, 99–100
11. ^ Thomas, 179–182; Dickinson, 99–100
12. ^ Thomas, 171–182, 193; Dickinson, 99–100
13. ^ Maryon, 161; Craddock; Enkomi Basin
14. ^ Craddock and Giumlia-Mair, 109–120
15. ^ Craddock; Maryon, 161
16. ^ Lucas and Harris, 249–250
17. ^ Johns, 175–177
18. ^ Osborne, 595
19. ^ Solberg, S., (2003) Jernalderen I Norge, page 158. Oslo, Norway: J.W. Cappelens Forlag
20. ^ Zarnecki, 287, 283, 285
21. ^ Zarnecki, 302
22. ^ Osborne, 595
23. ^ Levinson, 528–529; Landau, 98–99; Osborne, 595
24. ^ Example in the British Museum
25. ^ Levinson, 528–529; Landau, 26, 67–68
26. ^ Osborne, 595
27. ^ Ganina
28. ^ In a fashion similar to the Roman "Hoxne Tiger" of the Hoxne Hoard
29. ^ Prudence Oliver Harper, Silver Vessels of the Sasanian Menstruum: Royal imagery, 64–65 (see note 128 in particular), 1981, Metropolitan Museum of Art, ISBN 0870992481, 9780870992483, google books
30. ^ Graham, Walter Armstrong (1913). Siam: A Handbook of Applied, Commercial, and Political Data. F. G. Browne. p. 435.
31. ^ Maryon, 161–162; Craddock
32. ^ Craddock; Newman
33. ^ Maryon, 162–164; Newman; Craddock
34. ^ Levinson, 528
35. ^ Osborne, 595 (following Theophilus Presbyter)
36. ^ Craddock

References [edit]

• Craddock, P. T., "Metal" V. 4, Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Spider web. i Oct. 2017, Subscription required ^{[ permanent dead link ]}
• Craddock, Paul and Giumlia-Mair, Allessandra, "Hsmn-Km, Corinthian statuary, Shakudo: black patinated bronze in the ancient world", Affiliate ix in Metal Plating and Patination: Cultural, technical and historical developments, Ed. Susan La-Niece and Craddock, P. T., 2013, Elsevier, ISBN 1483292061, 9781483292069, google books
• Dickinson, Oliver et al., The Aegean Statuary Historic period, 1994, Cambridge University Printing, ISBN 0521456649, 9780521456647, [1]
• Ganina, O. (1974), The Kiev museum of historic treasures (A. Bilenko, Trans.). Kiev, Ukraine: Mistetstvo Publishers
• Johns, Catherine, The Jewellery of Roman Uk: Celtic and Classical Traditions, 1996, Psychology Press, ISBN 1857285662, 9781857285666, google books
• Landau, David, and Parshall, Peter. The Renaissance Print, Yale, 1996, ISBN 0300068832
• Levinson Jay A. (ed.), Early Italian Engravings from the National Gallery of Fine art, National Gallery of Art, Washington (Catalogue), 1973, LOC 7379624
• Maryon, Herbert, Metalwork and Enamelling, 1971 (5th ed.). Dover, New York, ISBN 0486227022, google books
• Lucas A and Harris J. Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries, 2012 (reprint, 1st edn 1926), Courier Corporation, ISBN 0486144941, 9780486144948, google books
• "Newman": R. Newman, J. R. Dennis, & E. Farrell, "a Technical Note on Niello", Journal of the American Institute for Conservation, 1982, Volume 21, Number 2, Article half-dozen (pp. 80 to 85), online text
• Osborne, Harold (ed), "Niello", in The Oxford Companion to the Decorative Arts, 1975, OUP, ISBN 0198661134
• Smith, Due west. Stevenson, and Simpson, William Kelly. The Art and Compages of Ancient Egypt, tertiary edn. 1998, Yale University Printing (Penguin/Yale History of Art), ISBN 0300077475
• Thomas, Nancy R., "The Early Mycenaean Lion up to Date", pp. 189–191, in Charis: Essays in Honor of Sara A. Immerwahr, Hesperia (Princeton, N.J.) 33, 2004, ASCSA, ISBN 0876615337, 9780876615331, google books
• Zarnecki, George and others; English language Romanesque Fine art, 1066–1200, 1984, Arts Quango of Great Britain, ISBN 0728703866

Further reading [edit]

• Dittell, C. (2012), Overview of Siam Sterling Nielloware, Tampa, FL (or Survey of Siam Sterling Nielloware, (E-Book), Bookbaby Publishers)
• Giumlia-Mair, A. 2012. "The Enkomi Cup: Niello versus Kuwano", in 5. Kassianidou & M. Papasavvas (eds.) Eastern Mediterranean Metallurgy and Metalwork in the Second Millennium BC. A Conference in Accolade of James D. Muhly, Nicosia, x–11 October 2009, 107–116. Oxford & Oakville: Oxbow Books.
• Northover P. and La Niece S., "New Thoughts on Niello", in From Mine to Microscope: Advances in the Report of Ancient Technology, eds. Ian Freestone, Thilo Rehren, Shortland, Andrew J., 2009, Oxbow Books, ISBN 1782972773, 9781782972778, google books
• Oddy, W., Bimson, M., & La Niece, S. (1983). "The Composition of Niello Decoration on Gold, Argent and Bronze in the Antiquarian and Mediaeval Periods". Studies in Conservation, 28(1), 29–35. doi:ten.2307/1506104, JSTOR

External links [edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Niello.

• "Nielloware in Thailand". Archived from the original on 12 Jan 2015.
• East.Brepohls commodity on niello work

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niello

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