Jewelry art of ancient Russia. Traditional jewelry technologies in Russia

23.07.2019

When creating jewelry, the craftsmen use a large number of different techniques and techniques: thanks to them, each item acquires its own unique mood, value and significance. And, first of all, the quality of jewelry execution depends on the skill and experience of the jeweler, because such techniques as, for example, filigree or granulation require great concentration, precision of movements and perseverance in their work.

We offer you to learn more about different jewelry techniques and their history.

Filigree and filigree

Photo of a product made using the filigree technique (scani)

The filigree technique consists in creating an ornament by soldering together elements from a thin wire of precious and non-precious metals. The resulting lace can be soldered onto any base (brazed filigree) or form an air pattern (openwork filigree).

The term “filigree” itself comes from two Latin words: filum, which means “thread”, and granum, grain. In Russia, this technique acquired the name "scan" from the old Russian "skati", that is, "twist", "twist". The Russian filigree technique originated in the 10th-12th centuries, and by the 19th century it had already acquired the status of art. Jewelry, vases, caskets, decorative panels were made with filigree.

Christmas ball-box made using filigree technique (filigree)). Photo: Zlat Dar

The essence of the filigree technique is quite simple, but it requires a high level of artistic and jewelry skill, since the whole process is exclusively handmade. First, a sketch of the future pattern is depicted on paper in full size. Then, from a smooth or pre-twisted wire, its elements are created, which are glued to a paper sketch - they must exactly repeat the drawing. Under the action of the flame of a special burner, the parts are soldered into a single pattern, and the paper burns completely.

The village of Kazakovo, located in the Nizhny Novgorod region, has become the center of modern scanned art. The first workshop opened here in 1939, and today it is already a large plant of CJSC "Kazakovskoe enterprise of art products." The range of manufactured products is incredibly wide: jewelry, decorative elements, orders and medals, church and religious items. Due to high quality and artistic value, the plant's products are a success in the domestic market and abroad.

Grain

In Russian jewelry art, filigree and granulation techniques are inextricably linked. Grain is usually added to scanned patterns, giving them a more complete and finished look. The simple name of the technique fully reflects its essence. A grain is an ornament created from small, 0.3-0.4 mm in diameter, gold, silver or platinum grains. The balls are installed in pre-prepared recesses in the pattern on the thinnest layer of solder, which fuses them with the base in the flame of the burner. It is important that the solder can securely fix the pattern, but does not violate its clarity, spreading beyond the recess. In Russia, gold leaf mixed with mercury was used for these purposes, in the process of soldering the mercury burned out, and the gold quickly melted, forming a reliable clutch.

Another condition for creating a high-quality pattern is the same size of all grains. To obtain them, a thin wire is cut into small pieces, which are placed on pieces of charcoal, where recesses of a given diameter are located in rows, the molten wire flows into them, forming small balls, which will later go to decoration.

blackening

The blackening technique is also a fairly old jewelry technique. The composition for blackening is applied to the surface of the product in accordance with the pattern, then the black is melted in special ovens, forming a contrasting pattern. Each master has his own recipe for the mixture for blackening; the color and strength of the coating, its thickness and density depend on its composition.

Often, filigree and grained items are blackened to give clarity and texture to the ornament. Also, a three-dimensional pattern can be applied by gouging, chasing, engraving.

Among all metals, blackening of silver is the most common, since in this case the product not only acquires a richer and nobler appearance, but also becomes resistant to chemical and mechanical damage. Gold and platinum are used less frequently only because it is almost impossible to remove high-quality black from the surface in the future, and such decoration can no longer be melted down.

We hope that the information turned out to be interesting and useful for you. We also invite you to get acquainted with the complex, but increasingly popular, technique of working with metals - which originated in the 17th century in Japan.

World jewelry art began with jewelry, which was originally made from bone, sea shells, etc. But in the 7th millennium BC. humanity invented the technique of mechanical processing of native stone, and in the 5th millennium BC. high-temperature melting of copper in furnaces and casting technique appear. Jewelry art begins to develop rapidly.
On this page, we will introduce you to the traditional jewelry technologies that existed in the times of Kievan Rus and have come down to the present day - such as casting, forging, embossing, stamping, niello, gilding, inlay, wire drawing, filigree and granulation.

Foundry business

Casting was one of the most important methods of processing copper, silver and their alloys. With gold, due to its high cost, this technique, which required massive objects, was almost never applied, with the exception of small things. The casting of copper, bronze, brass, silver, and other alloys does not represent fundamental differences. Casting was the main method of metal processing by village "copper and silver smiths".

Casting in the old Russian village

Casting is the oldest technique known to the population of Eastern Europe since the Bronze Age. The metal was melted in clay crucibles with the participation of bellows, which increased the temperature of the hearth. Then the molten metal (or an alloy of metals) was scooped from the crucibles with a clay spoon, which bore the special name "lyachka" (from the verb "to pour"). Lyachki were most often made with a spout for draining molten metal and a clay sleeve into which a wooden handle was inserted. The lyachka with metal was heated on fire, and then the liquid metal was poured into the mold, it was necessary to fill all its recesses with metal. When the poured mold cooled, a metal product was removed from it, exactly repeating the casting mold. The forms and volumes of ancient Russian crucibles are varied. The capacity of the crucibles ranged from large volumes of 400 cc to small volumes of 10 cc. Crucibles could be round-bottomed or sharp-bottomed, less often flat-bottomed. The most common were cone-shaped crucibles with a rounded bottom. The crucibles were made of clay mixed with sand and fireclay.

Almost all casting molds were one-sided. Such forms were covered from above with smooth tiles, most often made of limestone. The front side of objects produced in this form was embossed, and the reverse side (touching stone tiles) was smooth.

Casting could be done in one-sided molds and without a smooth cover, directly in open molds. If both halves did not fit snugly against each other, then the metal leaked into the cracks and formed the so-called casting seams, which were usually removed already from the finished product. With a one-sided mold, these seams are located closer to the back flat side of the product. In order to make some kind of openwork pendant with slots in the middle, it was necessary to leave intact those places where there should be voids in the mold during its manufacture. Then these places that are not cut on the form will be in close contact with the overhead cover of the form, and the metal will not penetrate there. If it was necessary to make a hole not in the plane of the thing itself, but, for example, an eyelet for hanging from a necklace, then for this a channel was made in the mold perpendicular to the casting, and an iron rod was inserted into this channel. The metal, pouring through the casting, flowed around the inserted rod, and when the rod was removed, a hole was obtained. The ornament, carved into the form in depth, on the finished thing, of course, turned out to be convex.

In addition to one-sided forms with a smooth lid, two-sided ones were also used, that is, those in which their second half was not smooth, but also figured. Sometimes both halves of the mold were made exactly the same, and the thing turned out to be symmetrical, and the casting seam went in the middle.

A clay soft mold was also used, which most accurately conveyed all the details of the processing of the original model, from which the mold was made. Clay forms are also known in the cities - in Kiev, in Chersonese, but in the cities they were not used as widely as in the countryside. In the city, the demand for mass production forced the craftsman to look for more durable materials than clay.
Very interesting and original casting on a wicker model. At first glance, the things made by this technique seem to be woven from copper wires, but upon closer examination, it turns out that they are cast. The wax model for such products was woven from wired linen or woolen cords, which easily stuck together and made it possible to weave complex patterns. The resulting wax model was doused with a liquid solution of clay, enveloping all the finest recesses of the form. After the clay thickened, the model was poured over several more times until a solid clay mold was obtained. The next task was to melt the wax and burn out the remnants of the cords.

This wicker wax casting technique was widespread in the northeast. In the Russian regions proper, this painstaking technique, which brought casting closer to lace knitting, was not particularly successful.

City ancient Russian casting

In the early era of the development of the Russian city, many casting techniques were the same in the city and the countryside. For example, during the IX-X centuries. urban casters most often used casting on a wax model, and only later did rigid casting molds appear.
The ease of making complex patterns on wax has always attracted the attention of craftsmen to this type of casting. The only obstacle was the fragility of the resulting casting mold, which, although it could withstand several castings, was easily chipped and broken. In the IX-X centuries. this technique was used to make pendants for necklaces, belt plaques, clasps for caftans (Gulbishche) and heads for neck torcs. Compared with the rural technique of processing a wax model, the following differences can be distinguished: urban casters cut the model with special cutters, not content with just extruding a pattern, which was used by rural craftsmen. Wax carving gave a bright play of light and shadow and made it possible to significantly increase the artistic expressiveness of the cast product. The method of the lost form was also used in the 11th-13th centuries. for casting the most complex objects.
An important improvement in foundry was the discovery of a method of double-sided casting on two wax models, which was widely used in the 12th century.

Another form of foundry craftsmanship is casting in rigid moulds.

Various types of slate (including pink slate), occasionally limestone, and at the end of the pre-Mongolian period, mainly lithographic stone, which allowed for particularly careful finishing, served as the material for the manufacture of casting molds. Very rarely, and only for tin casting, bronze molds were used.

Most stone molds are double sided with very carefully lapped surfaces to eliminate casting seams. For the correct alignment of both halves, nests were drilled in the molds, of which one was filled with a lead pin, fitted so that it fit snugly into the free groove of the second half. This ensured the immobility of both forms. Three-component molds were invented by Kiev jewelers to cast voluminous things with complex relief ornamentation.

According to the nature of the finish, all casting molds can be divided into molds with incised lines and molds with convex lines. In the first case, the master did not need special care: he simply cut deep into the stone. On the finished product, a relief pattern was obtained.

Forging and chasing

These techniques are most widely used in the city.
In most cases, various dishes were forged from copper and silver. The goldsmith cast a flat cake from silver (or copper), and then began to forge it on an anvil from the middle to the edges. Thanks to this technique, the thing gradually took on a hemispherical shape. By intensifying the blows in certain areas and leaving some places less forged, the master achieved the desired contour of the thing. Sometimes a pallet was riveted to the bowls (the edges were rounded), and a chased ornament was applied to the rim and body. An example of forged silver utensils is the gilded silver chara of the Chernigov prince Vladimir Davydovich, found in the Tatar capital Sarai.

The coinage of these metals is almost inextricably linked with the forging of silver and copper. The chasing technique can be divided into three types: small-punch ornamental chasing, flat chasing and embossed chasing. For some works, all types of chasing were used, but each of these types has its own technical features and its own history.

The simplest type of embossing is that the pattern was applied to the outer surface of the thing with various punches. The plate to be decorated was placed on a rigid lining and a pattern was applied, compacting the metal in the place of the pattern, but without making bulges on the back. The pattern was applied with punches of various shapes: some looked like a small chisel, others gave an imprint in the form of a ring, circle, triangle, etc. The most complete chasing with miniature punches can be traced from Smolensk and Chernigov materials of the 9th-10th centuries. The technique of small-punched chasing arose in the northern Russian cities in the 9th-10th centuries. and continued to exist there.

The second type of chasing works - flat chasing - is characterized by the creation of any compositions by drowning the background around the outlined figures. The work is carried out with the same miniature punches, but only the simplest pattern - a solid circle, a ring, a dash. This method of chasing is always combined with the work of a chisel. Chasing was carried out as follows: a forged thin sheet of silver was nailed to a smooth wooden board, the outline of the pattern was applied to it with a light pressure of the chisel, and then the background around the outlined pattern was sunk down by repeated hammer blows on the punch, as a result of which the pattern became embossed. Typically, the height of the relief with this method was small - 0.5-1.5 mm, and the relief was flat.

Examples of flat chasing include the famous silver fitting of a turye horn from Chernaya Mogila. It is a unique monument of Russian jewelry art of the 10th century.

Flat-relief chasing prevailed among the ornamental techniques of the 10th - the first half of the 11th century. Around the middle of the XI century. it is partly superseded by a new, improved technique of stamping or embossing silver on special matrices, which later developed into a favorite technique - “basma embossing” (repeated use of one stamp in the same ornament). Chasing is preserved only when making unique custom-made items. But at the same time, master chasers are not satisfied with punch or flat chasing, but work in a third way - the method of relief, convex chasing, which in ancient Russia was called "defensive business".

The essence of convex chasing lies in the fact that at first the ornamented silver plate is minted from the reverse side, squeezing the pattern outward with a sharp convex relief. Only after a convex pattern is obtained on the front side by such chasing, the front side is subjected to more detailed processing: clothes, face, hair are cut, the general relief is corrected. In order not to tear the thin metal with such a deep, convex chasing, the work is done on a special elastic cushion made of pitch, wax or resin. This technique was much more complicated than simple embossing on the front side. Armored coinage appears around the 12th century. Samples of this coinage are found mainly in Veliky Novgorod.

Embossing and stamping

An improvement and mechanization of the process of flat-relief chasing was the use of special stamps or matrices, with the help of which a relief pattern was imprinted on thin sheets of silver or gold. The technique of silver embossing was of particular importance due to the widespread use of the art of niello, which required a protruding relief pattern and a background sunk down.

Mostly silver went under the niello, as it gave a clear and bright pattern against the background of velvety niello. In order to carry out this game of silver and niello, the ancient Russian masters usually acted as follows: a drawing was applied on a silver plate with a light contour, then the background around this drawing, intended for blackening, was sunk in such a way that the drawing itself was higher than the background, since on the plane of the background a layer of black mass should be laid. Embossing was carried out on thin sheets of gold, silver, less often copper, by applying them to metal (copper, steel) matrices with a convex pattern. A lead plate was usually placed on top of the sheet on which the pattern of the matrix was to be imprinted, and this soft pad was struck with a wooden mallet, forcing the lead (and behind it the silver sheet) to fill all the recesses of the matrix. The plasticity of lead contributes to the exact repetition of the forms of the matrix on the processed silver sheet. At the end of embossing, a plate with a double pattern is obtained: on the front side, the pattern of the matrix is repeated, on the back - the same pattern, but in a negative form. Between the relief of the matrix and the relief of the finished product, some discrepancy is inevitable, due to the thickness of the metal sheet. The thicker the sheet, the smoother, flattened the relief on the front side will be.

Of particular interest is the time of the appearance of a new technique, which replaced painstaking chased work. The time of the appearance of the embossing technique is the era of Olga and Svyatoslav - the middle of the 10th century. Most likely, the emergence of a new technique in the work of Russian urban jewelers is connected to a certain extent with the influence of Byzantine culture and was one of the positive results of rapprochement with Byzantium.

Black

Enamel was most often used on gold, with niello worked on silver. "Where gold replaces silver, there enamel replaces niello." gold 1063°. Therefore, it is more difficult for an enameller working with silver to make thin enamel partitions and solder them in an oven to the bottom of the tray so that they do not melt. In the process of making niello, such delicate operations were not performed.

Niello is best preserved in the recesses of the design, so the creation of a suitable bed for it was achieved most naturally with the help of engraving. As a result, the master received a blackened drawing on a light background. Another way - blackening the background with a light pattern on it - assumed a deepening of the surface for the black. In all these cases, gilding was also widely used.
All of these techniques - engraving, gilding, blackening - basically changed little. Thus, chemical studies have shown that the blackening recipe described by Pliny the Elder passed from antiquity to the metalworking of the early Middle Ages with virtually no changes.

The first stage in the complex process of producing silver jewelry with niello was the manufacture of the thing itself, which was to be decorated with niello. Casting was rarely used for this. Only the tips of twisted bracelets and some rings with niello were cast, but in general, casting is a very uneconomical way of making things from precious metals. Usually blackened products were made from a thin sheet of silver. To create a hollow body from it in a cold state, a very ancient method was used - a manual punch (difovka). It is based on such a property of silver as viscosity, due to which the sheet processed by blows of a wooden hammer stretches, bends and acquires the necessary shape. In this way, some colts and hoops were made, performed by individual orders.

Mass production required an easier way. They turned out to be embossed on the matrix. Matrices cast from copper alloys had a convex outer surface and a flat inner one. The first, when embossed, provided the plate with a convex surface, the second made it possible to tightly fix the matrix on the workbench. During excavations, similar matrices were found more than once. They differ only in greater or less thoroughness of execution.

The second stage in the manufacture of hoops was engraving, an art closely related to niello. Engraving is the cutting of a pattern on metal, in which a linear pattern is applied to the metal using a steel cutter, or, as jewelers call it, a chisel. The ancient products with engraving that have come down to us differ from each other in various traces left by the engraver. In ancient Russia, as at the present time, craftsmen used engravers with a working edge of various shapes.

Radiar needle perform the first engraving operation - transferring the pattern from paper to metal. The plate on which the drawing must be transferred is fixed motionlessly on a special pillow. Resin heated in a vessel can serve as such a pillow, as is done when chasing. After that, a thin layer of wax is placed on the workpiece. A drawing made with a pencil on tracing paper is placed on the wax with the front side and lightly pressed down, which leaves an imprint on the wax. This operation could look like this: a wooden stick with a pointed end is drawn along the lines of the drawing. When the paper is removed, the indented lines of the translated drawing remain on the wax.

It is difficult to say how the transfer of the drawing to metal was practically carried out in antiquity. It can only be argued that this process took place, as evidenced by the perfect engraving drawing of such subjects as complex wickerwork, which is impossible without a preliminary sketch and translation. The translation of the drawing easily explains the amazing closeness of the plots engraved on the hoops with the ornamental plots of the handwritten books of ancient Russia. Along the line of the pattern transferred to the wax surface of the silver blank, the drawing was passed with a radiometer needle, and it was finally fixed on the metal.

The final stage of work on the decoration with niello and engraving was the niello itself. Niello on ancient Russian jewelry varies in density and tone. Sometimes it looks black and velvet, sometimes it looks like silver-gray with a slate sheen. It depends on the various formulations, the subtleties of which we could only penetrate as a result of chemical quantitative analysis. Since such an analysis requires a significant amount of niello and the partial destruction of an ancient thing, this way of research cannot be used. Already in the X century. we meet with silver items decorated with a niello pattern. V. I. Sizov singled out among the Gnezdov materials plaques of Russian work, with a background filled with niello. The niello ornament adorns the already mentioned turium horn from the Black Grave.

The composition of the black mass includes: silver, lead, red copper, sulfur, potash, borax, salt. Usually this mixture is stored in powder form.
Until the end of the XII century. niello art was dominated by a black background and light relief figures on it.

Samples of niello 11-13 centuries.

Inlay

The simplest and oldest type of inlay is found on spurs of the 10th-11th centuries. A series of depressions were made in the hot iron with a thin chisel, which were later clogged with small gold or silver carnations. Gold was sometimes driven in flush with the surface of the iron, but sometimes it appeared in the form of small bumps.

Also used was the insertion of gold wire into iron and the coating of large areas of iron with silver sheets (often followed by gilding). To do this, the surface of the iron was either notched with an oblique groove (for wire) or the entire surface was covered with notches and roughness for better adhesion to silver.

The helmet of Yaroslav Vsevolodovich can serve as an example of solid silver stuffing, the case of which, free of gilded chased overlays, was stuffed with silver. Battle axes were decorated with inlay and overlay.

Gilding

It found the widest application in the life of Kievan Rus, allowed several different ways of applying gold. Least of all, the imposition of gold foil was used as the least durable method of connection.
In products of the IX-X centuries. Gilding is used very widely, playing an important role in decorating various products.
The oldest monument should be considered a fragment of a copper plate from Kiev with a gold pattern depicting a city with a part of the fortress wall, a tower, a boat with a high curved prow and a crowd of soldiers with spears and shields. Warriors are beardless, beardless, their hair is cut in a circle. It is quite possible that, unlike other church doors that have come down to us, the Kiev fragment belonged to the door of a secular palace, since the images on it are devoid of any admixture of churchness.

Copper plate with a gold pattern (Kiev)

The invention of gold writing freed the artist from the tedious physical work involved in inlay work, allowing him the freedom to create intricate and intricate patterns and compositions.

In this regard, Russian jewelers overtook their Constantinople, Italian and Rhine contemporaries, creating a new type of gilding technique. Judging by the fact that this technique survived the Tatar pogrom and continued to exist in Novgorod in the XIV century, one can think that in the XII-XIII centuries. it was distributed in all the most important Russian cities (Kiev, Novgorod, Ryazan, Suzdal).

Wire drawing, filigree and granulation

One of the most important sections of the jewelry technology of the ancient Russian cities is wire drawing. The need for wire was great and a lot of it was required for various needs. Copper, silver and gold wire was used for various products. Large-caliber wire was used to make hryvnias and bracelets, thinner - for temporal rings, chains, and the thinnest wire threads decorated the surface of various objects with a complex and elegant filigree pattern.

An interesting blank of a copper wire harness for hryvnias was found in Kiev. The master made a thick wire in advance, twisted it into a bundle, and then twisted it into several rows. As needed, a piece was cut off from the workpiece and a hryvnia was made from it. Found tourniquet is designed for 8-10 hryvnia.

Here we have an example of the transition from work to order to work on the market. The master pulls the wire in advance, even before receiving an order for hryvnias, prepares raw materials for them - a tourniquet. It is quite obvious that the master made a blank for future orders and did not dare to cut the wire, since hryvnias could be ordered in different sizes. From here, there is only one step before the master decides to prepare for the future not only the wire, but also the hryvnias themselves; in this case, his workshop would become at the same time a place for selling jewelry.

Thin wire served to make a variety of filigree patterns. Filigree, Russian filigree (from "skati" - to twist, twist), is a twisted wire that forms a pattern. The filigree can be openwork, when the wires themselves form the frame of the thing, but it can also be a consignment note on the plate. In both cases, soldering is required to fasten the threads to each other or to the plate.

The granulation technique that always accompanies it is completely inseparable from filigree - soldering the smallest grains of metal onto the plate. Grains of gold or silver were harvested in advance from the smallest drops of metal, and then placed with small tweezers on an ornamented plate. Then everything followed in the same way as with filigree: sprinkled with solder and put on a brazier. It is possible that copper soldering irons heated in the same brazier were used in this work. Soldering irons corrected those places where the solder poorly covered the grain or thread.

To prepare granules, modern jewelers practiced the following simple technique: molten metal (gold or silver) is poured into a tank of water through a wet broom or sieve, spraying the metal into tiny drops. Sometimes casting of molten metal through a jet of water is used; this technique was difficult for ancient Russian masters to implement, since this required a horizontal jet of water. The grains of the solidified metal had to be sorted by size, since with the methods described they could not be even.

Grain and filigree were found in Russian burial mounds starting from the 9th century, and later on they were the favorite technique of urban goldsmiths. In the early times, silver crescents were especially zealously decorated with grain. Some of them are soldered with 2250 tiny silver grains, each of which is 5-6 times smaller than a pinhead. For 1 sq. cm accounts for 324 grains. On grained Kiev kolts, the number of grains reaches 5000.

Sometimes cloisonné grain was used. A thin smooth wire was soldered onto the plate - the frame of the pattern. The space between the wires was densely covered with grain, which was soldered all at once.

A special decorative technique that appeared hardly earlier than the 12th century was the soldering of miniature wire rings onto a hollow silver ball, on which one grain of silver was attached on top. It was with these techniques that star-shaped Kiev kolts were made. The diameter of the wire from which the rings were made reached 0.2 mm. The painstaking work was rewarded by a subtle play of light and shadow.

One of the uses of filigree was the ornamentation of gold and silver planes on large items such as icon frames, kokoshniks, large kolts and barms.

The development of filigree technique with spiral curls influenced the ornamentation of the 12th-13th centuries. In fresco painting, in miniature and in applied art, it is at this time that the spiral pattern appears.

As well as in casting and in other areas of urban jewelry technology, and in the field of filigree and graining, we are faced with the presence of a wide mass production along with the works listed above for demanding customers. In the mounds of the Dregovichi Drevlyans, Volhynians, and partly Krivichs, there are copper beads made of a wire frame with a blue grain on it.

For a long time, ancient Russian masters improved their skills, reaching a higher and higher level. Artisans at the highest level were engaged in pottery, wood carving, stone processing, etc., but they achieved the most excellent results in metal processing. They mastered all the techniques of jewelry art. Old Russian craftsmen used the technique of filigree, granulation, casting, chasing, forging, inlay, drawing, blackening, etc., they even mastered the prohibitively complex technique of cloisonné enamel.

Blacksmiths were engaged in casting from silver and bronze, creating real works of art. But jewelry work in the Old Russian state was not limited to casting. Many cast items were decorated with unique engraved and chased patterns and inlaid with precious stones. The uniqueness of the jewelry traditions of Ancient Russia lay in the versatility of the craftsmen who knew how to work with all known techniques.

The destruction of communal-tribal relations and the emergence of specialists in narrow industries - these are the changes that characterize Ancient Russia in the eighth-ninth centuries. Crafts lead to the emergence of cities, separating part of the population from work on the land. This is due to the appearance of the first specialists - masters in certain types of crafts, which were concentrated in tribal centers - cities.

Cities - craft centers

They tried to build the city in such a way that its geographical position would allow trade to be carried out as best as possible and at the same time successfully defended from enemies. For example, in a place where two rivers merge, or around a hill. Representatives of the authorities also settled in the cities. Therefore, they were well guarded. Gradually, with the development of crafts, cities began to be not just military fortifications, but turned into trading centers.

The Kremlin was located in the center of the city, where the prince settled. This part was surrounded by a fortress wall and surrounded by an earthen rampart. In addition, a deep ditch was dug around, which was filled with water. All these precautions were necessary to protect against enemies. Outside, around the Kremlin, there were settlements of artisans, the so-called settlements. This part of the city was called the settlement. In many settlements, this part was also surrounded by a defensive wall.

Life in the cities was in full swing, artisans created their goods, craft and trade of Ancient Russia were actively developing. By the twelfth century, there were over sixty craft specialties. The craftsmen specialized in the manufacture of items of clothing, utensils, tools that ancient Russia needed. The crafts of Ancient Russia developed rapidly and rapidly. Talented professionals of various fields lived and worked in the settlements: masters of blacksmithing, jewelry, pottery, shoemakers, tailors, weavers, stone cutters, and representatives of other crafts. The hands of these craftsmen created the economic wealth and strength of the ancient Russian state, its high material and spiritual culture.

Without iron - nowhere

Blacksmiths were the pioneers. Their work has become one of the most important areas into which the crafts of Ancient Russia of the 9th-12th centuries were divided. This work is mentioned in folk epics and folklore: epics, legends and fairy tales, where the blacksmith is always a model of strength, courage and kindness. In those days, iron was obtained by smelting from swamp ore. They mined it in the off-season, dried it and then delivered it to workshops, where they melted it with the help of special furnaces. This is how the metal was made. During excavations, modern archaeologists often found slags, which are waste from the metal smelting process, and vigorously forged pieces of iron masses. The found remains of blacksmith workshops have preserved parts of furnaces and furnaces, near which artisans once worked.

There is a business for a blacksmith: goods for warriors and farmers

With the development of metal production, a new round of trade development begins, which the country that lived in subsistence farming did not know before. blacksmithing in particular, had a pronounced practical orientation. Products produced by blacksmiths were required by everyone. They were needed by warriors who ordered weapons - arrowheads, sabers, spears, swords - and protective clothing - chain mail and helmets. The production of weapons in Ancient Russia reached a special level of skill, which can be called a real art. Unique armor was found in burials and necropolises in Kiev, Chernigov and other cities.

Forged tools were needed by farmers: without iron scythes, sickles, coulters, plowshares, it was impossible to imagine the cultivation of land. Any household required needles, knives, saws, locks, keys and other household items made in the forge by talented craftsmen. Finds in the form of burials of blacksmiths showed that even their working tools were sent to the graves together with blacksmiths - hammers and anvils, chisels and tongs.

Historians believe that more than 150 types of metal products were known in the eleventh century by Ancient Russia. The crafts of Ancient Russia played an important role in the development of trade between the settlements.

Jewelry craftsmanship

Blacksmiths were sometimes engaged in small work, creating small masterpieces - jewelry. Gradually, goldsmithing became a separate industry. This is how the jewelry craft appeared in Ancient Russia. Russian craftsmen mastered the technique of making jewelry so well that one could only wonder how they succeeded. Skillful things that have survived to our times - bronze amulets, pendants, buckles, earrings and necklaces - amaze with the subtlety of workmanship. Jewelry was created using the granulation technique, while a pattern was soldered on top of them, the basis of which was a lot of metal balls. Another way of making jewelry was filigree. This technique is characterized by the fact that the drawing was created with a thin wire, which was soldered onto a metal surface, the resulting gaps were filled with enamel of different colors. Jewelers also mastered figured casting, as well as the niello technique, which required special art, when a pattern of silver plates was placed on a black background. Beautiful items with gold and silver inlays on iron and copper have survived to this day. Such complex techniques testify to the high level reached by the development of crafts in Ancient Russia. So, the hands of ancient Russian artisans created high-value jewelry made using the technique. This was a kind of brand of Russian goldsmithing. The skill of Russian jewelers was a very complex technique, and their work was distributed all over the world and, at the same time, was highly valued and in great demand everywhere.

And bricks and dishes were molded everywhere

The pottery craft of Ancient Russia emerged as an independent industry a little later than blacksmithing. The potter's wheel appeared with our ancestors in the eleventh century. This allowed the ancient craftsmen to create beautiful products. The device of the machine was simple, it rotated with the help of a foot drive, but the dishes that the potters of that time managed to create are striking in their craftsmanship and variety of forms. Initially, the manufacture of pottery was a women's business. However, in the literary handwritten monuments of Kievan Rus there are mentions only of male potters.

They used clay for their products, which was specially processed, moistened with water and actively kneaded. Of all the pottery, the greatest demand was for pots and other vessels, which were made of different sizes and used for different purposes, they could pour water or store food, berries. The pots were placed in the oven and the food was cooked. Such dishes have survived to this day.

What were the ancient Russian masters famous for?

Describing the crafts of Ancient Russia in the 9th-12th centuries, we briefly note that the Russian Slavs of the pre-Christian period knew how to make chasing, produced ceramics, mastered the art of fine embroidery, and were famous for their mastery of making enamels. The works of Kiev artists have survived to this day. These are unique examples of bone carving, blackening, metal engraving. Old Russian masters of glassmaking and their tiles were famous all over the world.

Ancient Russia mastered various crafts, but the most skillful of them was woodworking. Outbuildings, dwellings, gates and bridges, fortresses and walls were built from this material. Boats were wooden, all household utensils were generously decorated with wood carvings. It's no secret that the main souvenir, personifying the artistic craft in Ancient Russia, is a matryoshka - a colorfully painted wooden doll with a void inside. One after another, the same beauties get out of it, and each is slightly smaller than the previous one.

Art painting

Decorative and applied crafts of Ancient Russia were famous far beyond its borders. Since ancient times, our ancestors have admired the whole world with their paintings. The variety of patterned motifs in Russian ornamentation led to the emergence of different schools and directions of this folk craft. Each of them had its own colors and lines.

gzhel

The bright blue-and-blue painting with cobalt on a white background of porcelain was called Gzhel, which comes from the name of the town near Moscow, where this direction originated. It was first mentioned in the charter of Ivan Kalita. First, the craftsmen made dishes and toys, later, with the development of production, the range expanded significantly. Fireplace tiles were especially popular. Gzhel ceramics has become popular all over the world. Other murals of our ancestors also received names from the places of their creation and distribution.

Bright colors on a dark background

Artistic craft in ancient Russia, which came in the eighteenth century from a village near Moscow with the same name. It is an oil painting on metal trays. It is easy to recognize it by bright colorful flowers, fruits, birds, located on a dark background. The applied patterns are then covered with a special varnish, which is why they have such a shiny look. The technique of this painting is rather complicated, the image is created in several stages.

Very cheerful shades are pleasing to the eye, so trays were very popular in Russia and are still a decorative element in many homes and institutions.

Palekh

From the regional center in the Ivanovo region came This type of craft is a painting on lacquerware. Painted over a black background, colorful folklore, household, religious scenes adorn caskets, caskets and other things. It is believed that the Palekh lacquer miniature appeared in the fifteenth century, when ancient Russia was distinguished by the flourishing of cities and trade. Crafts originated in different ways. For example, such a direction of the ancient craft as the Palekh miniature was created by ancient Russian icon painters. Skillful artists lived in Palekh, who received invitations from all Russian regions to paint in temples and churches. It was they who began to paint the caskets with all sorts of fabulous and historical plots. All images were applied bright over a black background.

The technology of this type of craft is quite complicated, the process of creating miniatures is time-consuming and multi-stage. It takes a long time to study and master it, but as a result, an ordinary dark box turns into a thing of unique beauty.

Khokhloma

Another type of hand painting on wood is Khokhloma, which appeared more than three hundred years ago. Dishes and household items painted with fiery scarlet colors attract attention with their unusualness. Patterns that develop into beautiful ornaments are pleasing to the eye even today. There is a secret in the creation of Khokhloma products, which lies in the fact that they are varnished several times, after which they are tempered in an oven. As a result of firing, the coating turns yellow, and the products created from wood seem to be gilded precious utensils. In addition, the dishes as a result of such processing become durable. Its coating allows you to use Khokhloma cups, bowls, spoons for their intended purpose - for storing food, for eating.

Lubok pictures

Lubok is another type of folk art representing the crafts of Ancient Russia. This occupation was the creation of an impression on paper using a wooden cliché. Such folk pictures were common in the fair trade as early as the seventeenth century and until the beginning of the twentieth century were the most massive and widespread type of Russian fine art. The plots displayed by the lubok are very diverse: religious and moral themes, folk epos and fairy tales, historical and medical information, which were always accompanied by a small text that could be instructive or humorous and told about the customs and life of their time with the wisdom inherent in the people.

Crafts of Ancient Russia, 18th century: Russian samovar

We have the right to be proud of the skill of our Russian craftsmen. Today, their work can be seen not only in museums, but also in our own homes. Some types of crafts in Ancient Russia were especially popular. For example, throughout our country to this day there is a Tula samovar. In the eighteenth century, there were more than two hundred different types of these products. Nowadays, in the city of Tula, there is even a museum of samovars.

Who were the first masters that Ancient Russia was so famous for? Crafts, unfortunately, did not retain the names of their creators. But things that have come down to us from the depths of centuries speak to us. Among them there are unique rare items and household utensils, but in each product you can feel the skill and experience of the old Russian craftsman.

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Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation

Federal state budget educational

Institution of Higher Professional Education

"Novgorod State University

named after Yaroslav the Wise"

on the topic: “Jewellery in ancient Russia.

Review of jewelry techniques»

Veliky Novgorod, 2013

INTRODUCTION

Jewelry art is the manufacture of art products from precious (gold, silver, platinum), as well as some non-ferrous metals, often combined with valuable and ornamental stones, pearls, glass, amber, mother-of-pearl, bone, etc.

Jewelry art began with jewelry, which was originally made from bone, sea shells, and the like. But in the 7th millennium BC. humanity invented the technique of mechanical processing of native stone. This was a turning point in the history of jewelry. And in the 5th millennium BC. there is a high-temperature melting of copper in the forges and a casting technique. Jewelry art begins to develop rapidly.

In Kievan Rus, Kiev became the center of jewelry making, but such cities as Veliky Novgorod, Smolensk, Pskov, Chernigov, Tula, etc., were not much inferior to it. embossing casting filigree inlay

This work is devoted to an overview of the main jewelry techniques, such as casting, forging, embossing, embossing, niello, gilding, inlay, wire drawing, filigree and granulation. I will not touch on any territorial specifics of the performance of these techniques, just as I will not go deep into their details.

Now I will touch briefly on the historiography of the issue.

In the middle of the 19th century, Ivan Egorovich Zabelin wrote the work “On metal production in Russia until the end of the 17th century”, but this study contained quite a few materials on the early period.

By the end of the XIX century. so much material has accumulated that it could be generalized; N. P. Kondakov took up its generalization. At first, his attention was drawn only to objects with cloisonne enamel, and later it was extended to all urban jewelry art in general.

Together with I. I. Tolstoy, Kondakov wrote a six-volume history of Russian antiquities.

Continuing the work of Zabelin, Kondakov very carefully studied the enamel and jewelry business, its technique, and the dating of individual items. Kondakov defended Russian culture from attacks by the Normans and proved the existence of a highly developed Russian craft, but at the same time he often fell into an excessive passion for Byzantine influence.

There were many works devoted to the craft in Russia, but all of them poorly revealed the art of jewelry and, often, the material in them was very stingy, and sometimes even obviously incorrect.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the work of the Czech Slavist L. G. Niederle was published, which devotes a special section to the Old Russian craft. Chronologically, Niederle's work covers only the pre-Mongolian period, and territorially - all Slavic lands. The chapter devoted to crafts among the Slavs is divided into the following parts: 1. Extraction of metals. 2. Processing of metals (iron, copper, silver, tin). 3. Jewelery (filigree, granulation, work on gold). 4. Technique of glass and stone inlay. 5. Enamel. 6. Ceramics. 7. Wood processing. 8. Spinning and weaving.

It is easy to see that in this book a fairly large place is already given to jewelry art. But, unfortunately, this work was not noticed by Russian historical literature.

The Ukrainian and Byelorussian Academies of Sciences did a great deal of work on surveying and studying the settlements. As a result of all these works, dozens of craft workshops were opened. The first work that summarized to a certain extent the new material on Russian craft of the 9th - 12th centuries is the article by A. V. Artsikhovsky, which indicated specific ways of separating the craft from agriculture and its further development within the Vladimir-Suzdal and Smolensk lands.

In 1936, 40 years after the publication of the first volume of N. P. Kondakov’s Russian Treasures, color tables prepared by him for the second volume were published, reproducing a number of ancient Russian jewelry. The text for them was written by A. S. Gushchin. But Gushchin was engaged almost exclusively in the style of things, completely ignoring the technique of their manufacture.

Special technological study of Novgorod jewelry from the excavations of 1951-1958. the work of N. V. Ryndina is devoted to this. The researcher identified sets of tools and devices of Novgorod jewelers, established their techniques, established the chronology of these techniques.

Of course, over time, there were more and more studies and they contained more and more valuable materials and conclusions, so I will focus on the largest researchers.

In 1958, B.A. Rybakov’s book “The Craft of Ancient Russia” was published. This is a very complete study, in which a huge place is given to the jewelry craft, the author, speaking about individual techniques, sometimes divides the study into 2 parts: urban and rural, noting a number of significant differences between them. In fact, it is this study that forms the basis of this work.

In 1981, the book by M.V. Sedova "Jewellery of Ancient Novgorod (X - XV centuries)". This researcher chose to divide her book into chapters by type of jewelry. The book is richly illustrated with illustrations, which contributes to the perception of the material.

T.I. Makarova in 1986 publishes the book "The black business of Ancient Russia". Tatyana Ivanovna, like Maria Vladimirovna, divided her book into chapters according to the types of jewelry. The study often contains new and fairly complete information about the black business.

And a year before the work of Makarova, the collection “Ancient Russia. Town. Lock. Village". In this book, the sixth chapter on the craft was written by B.A. Kolchin. Several sheets in this chapter are devoted to the processing of non-ferrous metals. The information is presented concisely, but, despite this, covers a fairly wide range of jewelry techniques.

Now briefly about the sources of jewelry in Ancient Russia.

For the times of the domination of paganism, the main sources are materials from burial mounds.

With the adoption of Christianity, magnificent pagan funerals disappeared.

The burial mounds are replaced by treasures of treasures buried in the ground during times of danger. The preservation of things and their complexity in treasures is much better than in mounds, but treasures, as a historical source, also have a number of features.

The composition of the treasures is varied; they contain things from different eras, but still things that are closer to the time of the life of the last owners of the treasure predominate.

No less important than the hoards of jewelry are the excavations of craft workshops.

1. FOUNDRY

Casting was one of the most important methods of processing copper, silver and their alloys. With gold, due to its high cost, this technique, which required massive objects, was almost never used, with the exception of small handicrafts. There are no fundamental differences between casting copper, bronze, brass, silver, billon and other alloys. Casting was the main method of metal processing by the village "blacksmiths of copper and silver".

1.1 FOUNDRY IN THE OLD RUSSIAN VILLAGE

The lyachka with metal was heated on fire, and then the liquid metal was poured into the mold, it was necessary to fill all its recesses with metal. When the poured mold cooled, a metal product was removed from it, exactly repeating the casting mold.

The forms and volumes of ancient Russian crucibles are varied. The capacity of the crucibles ranged from large volumes of 400 cc to small volumes of 10 cc. The crucibles could be round-bottomed or sharp-bottomed, less often - flat-bottomed. The most common were cone-shaped crucibles with a rounded bottom. The crucibles were made of clay mixed with sand and fireclay.

The main types of casting (According to B.A. Rybakov):

1) casting in rigid molds (mainly in stone);

2) in plastic forms (clay, sand, molding earth);

3) on a wax model with shape retention,

4) on a wax model with the loss of a mold.

Casting could be done in one-sided molds and without a smooth cover, but directly in open molds.

If both halves did not fit snugly against each other, then the metal leaked into the cracks and formed the so-called casting seams, which were usually removed already from the finished product.

With a one-sided mold, these seams are located closer to the back flat side of the product. In order to make some kind of openwork pendant with slots in the middle, it was necessary to leave intact those places where there should be voids in the mold during its manufacture. Then these places that are not cut on the form will be in close contact with the overhead cover of the form, and the metal will not penetrate there.

If it was necessary to make a hole not in the plane of the thing itself, but, for example, an eyelet for hanging from a necklace, then for this a channel was made in the mold perpendicular to the casting, and an iron rod was inserted into this channel. The metal, pouring through the casting, flowed around the inserted rod, and when the rod was removed, a hole was obtained. The ornament, carved into the form in depth, on the finished thing, of course, turned out to be convex.

The last section of casting is braided pattern casting. At first glance, the things made by this technique seem to be woven from copper wires, but upon closer examination, it turns out that they are cast. The wax model for such products was woven from wired linen or woolen cords, which easily stuck together and made it possible to weave complex patterns.

The resulting wax model was doused with a liquid solution of clay, enveloping all the finest recesses of the form. After the clay thickened, the model was poured over several more times until a solid clay mold was obtained. The next task was to melt the wax and burn out the remnants of the cords.

This wicker wax casting technique was widespread in the northeast.

In the Russian regions proper, this painstaking technique, which brought casting closer to lace knitting, was not particularly successful.

1.2 CASTING TECHNIQUE IN THE OLD RUSSIAN CITY

The ease of making complex patterns on wax has always attracted the attention of craftsmen to this type of casting. The only obstacle was the fragility of the resulting casting mold, which, although it could withstand several castings, was easily chipped and broken.

In the IX-X centuries. this technique was used to make pendants for necklaces, belt plaques, clasps for caftans (Gulbishche) and heads for neck torcs.

Compared with the rural technique of processing a wax model, the following differences can be distinguished: urban casters cut the model with special cutters, not content with just extruding a pattern, which was used by rural craftsmen. Wax carving gave a bright play of light and shadow and made it possible to significantly increase the artistic expressiveness of the cast product.

In the XI-XII centuries. for the manufacture of bells, massive loss-of-shape casting was used

The method of the lost form was also used in the 11th-13th centuries. for casting the most complex objects.

An important improvement in foundry was the discovery of a method of double-sided casting on two wax models, which was widely used in the 12th century.

The second essential section of foundry craftsmanship is casting in rigid forms.

Most stone molds are double sided with very carefully lapped surfaces to eliminate casting seams.

For the correct alignment of both halves, nests were drilled in the molds, of which one was filled with a lead pin, fitted so that it fit snugly into the free groove of the second half. This ensured the immobility of both forms. Three-component molds were invented by Kiev jewelers to cast voluminous things with complex relief ornamentation.

Foundry art in the IX-XIII centuries:

1. Starting from the IX-X centuries. for casting complex three-dimensional objects, the method of casting on a wax model with loss of shape was widely used.

2. In the IX-XI centuries. for small handicrafts, the method of casting a flat wax model in a preserved one-sided clay mold was mainly used. In the first half of the XI century. there were special techniques for carving the wax model.

3. Not earlier than the 11th century, and most likely in the 12th century, casting appeared in flat double-sided casting molds (according to a wax model). In the XII-XIII centuries. this method is one of the means of mass production, mainly copper casting.

4. In the XI century. stone casting molds appeared, which contributed to an increase in the mass production.

5. In the 12th century, imitation casting molds appeared from dense rocks of stone with an extremely careful finish, with the help of which the artisans of the urban settlement imitate the complex technique of court jewelers (grain, filigree, etc.) in casting.

6. Casting of silver and its alloys was almost always combined with other techniques that complemented casting (chasing, niello, filigree, granulation, etc.). Copper casting existed without such additional processing. It is possible that the copper casters, "boilermakers", "casters", constituted a special group of urban artisans.

2. FORGING AND CHASING

These techniques are most widely used in the city.

In most cases, various dishes were forged from copper and silver.

The goldsmith cast a flat cake from silver (or copper), and then began to forge it on an anvil from the middle to the edges. Thanks to this technique, the thing gradually took on a hemispherical shape. By intensifying the blows in certain areas and leaving some places less forged, the master achieved the desired contour of the thing. Sometimes a pallet was riveted to the bowls (the edges were rounded), and a chased ornament was applied to the rim and body.

An example of forged silver utensils is the gilded silver chara of the Chernigov prince Vladimir Davydovich, found in the Tatar capital Sarai.

Forging works in jewelry technology had the widest application for a wide variety of purposes. Of particular note is the forging of thin sheets of silver and gold for various handicrafts. The greatest virtuosity was achieved by goldsmiths in the manufacture of gold plates for cloisonne enamel. The thickness of the gold leaf is measured in such plates not only in tenths, but even in hundredths of a millimeter. For architectural purposes, forging wide copper plates was used to cover the roofs. Copper sheets were often gilded, thanks to which the term “golden-domed tower” firmly entered Russian poetry.

The coinage of these metals is almost inextricably linked with the forging of silver and copper. The technique of chasing can be divided into three types:

1) small-punch ornamental embossing, 2) flat embossing, 3) embossed embossing.

For some works, all types of chasing were used, but each of these types has its own technical features and its own history.

The technique of small-punched chasing arose in the northern Russian cities in the 9th-10th centuries. and continued to exist there.

Examples of flat chasing include the famous silver fitting of a turye horn from Chernaya Mogila. Being a unique monument of Russian jewelry art of the 10th century.

Obronnaya chasing appears, approximately, in the XII century. Samples of this coinage are found mainly in Veliky Novgorod.

So, forging and chasing are the main points:

1. Forging copper, silver and gold (both hot and cold) was widely used for a variety of purposes. Forging dishes from thin sheets of metal required special art.

2. Chasing was originally carried out by drawing a pattern with steel punches (IX-X centuries). For products intended mainly for the village, this technique was also used in the 11th - 13th centuries. A special type of coinage was the application of an ornament with a steel gear.

3. In the X century. flat-relief embossing appears with a pattern that rises above the embossed background. The background was covered with either gold or black.

4. From the 11th century. the art of convex chasing (defensive business), which is known mainly from Novgorod samples, develops.

3. STAMPING AND STAMPING SILVER AND GOLD

The technique of silver embossing was of particular importance due to the widespread use of the art of niello, which required a protruding relief pattern and a background sunk down.

Embossing was carried out on thin sheets of gold, silver, less often copper, by applying them to metal (copper, steel) matrices with a convex pattern. A lead plate was usually placed on top of the sheet on which the pattern of the matrix was to be imprinted, and this soft pad was struck with a wooden mallet, forcing the lead (and behind it the silver sheet) to fill all the recesses of the matrix.

The plasticity of lead contributes to the exact repetition of the forms of the matrix on the processed silver sheet.

At the end of embossing, a plate with a double pattern is obtained: on the front side, the pattern of the matrix is repeated, on the back - the same pattern, but in a negative form. Between the relief of the matrix and the relief of the finished product, some discrepancy is inevitable, due to the thickness of the metal sheet. The thicker the fins, the smoother, flattened the relief on the front side will be.

Of particular interest is the time of the appearance of a new technique, which replaced painstaking chased work.

As the studies of G.F. Korzukhina showed, the time of the appearance of the embossing technique is the era of Olga and Svyatoslav - the middle of the 10th century. Most likely, the emergence of a new technique in the work of Russian urban jewelers is connected to a certain extent with the influence of Byzantine culture and was one of the positive results of rapprochement with Byzantium.

Embossing techniques:

1. In the X century. silver embossing appears for products with grain. Embossing of silver under black on special copper stamps-matrices was a replacement for more painstaking flat-chased work and arose in Russia in the 11th century. It was used mainly for kolts and other types of personal jewelry.

2. In the XII century. the pattern of matrices for embossing colts becomes more complicated (a weaving element appears). By the end of the century, embossing imitates not chasing, but engraving. Embossing of complex compositions appears (for book frames), replacing embossed embossing. There is a bassinet embossing of large sheets by means of several reusable matrices.

3. In the XIII century. imitation of flat chasing (common in the Chernigov Principality) is finally supplanted by imitation of relief chasing (Novgorod) and engraving (Chernigov and Kiev). At this time, the production of embossed slotted plaques for sewing onto fabric is being established.

4. Embossing on matrices, being a mass production, allows you to identify things made by one master. In this respect, embossing is similar to casting metal in molds.

4. NIello, GILDING AND INLAY

Enamel was most often used on gold, with niello worked on silver. "Where gold replaces silver, there enamel replaces niello". For cloisonne enamel, silver is a second-class material due to the fact that it is less soft and malleable than gold, and melts more easily: the melting point of silver is 960.5 °, and the melting point of gold is 1063 °. Therefore, it is more difficult for an enameller working with silver to make thin enamel partitions and solder them in an oven to the bottom of the tray so that they do not melt. In the process of making niello, such delicate operations were not performed.

All of the techniques listed - engraving, gilding, blackening - basically changed little. Thus, chemical studies have shown that the blackening recipe described by Pliny the Elder passed from antiquity to the metalworking of the early Middle Ages with virtually no changes.

Usually blackened products were made from a thin sheet of silver. To create a hollow body from it in a cold state, a very ancient method was used - a manual punch (difovka). It is based on such a property of silver as viscosity, due to which the sheet processed by blows of a wooden hammer stretches, bends and acquires the necessary shape. In this way, some colts and hoops were made, performed by individual orders.

The second stage in the manufacture of hoops was engraving, an art closely related to niello.

Engraving is a drawing on metal, in which a linear pattern is applied to the metal using a steel cutter, or, as jewelers call it, a chisel. The ancient products with engraving that have come down to us differ from each other in various traces left by the engraver. In ancient Russia, as at the present time, craftsmen used engravers with a working edge of various shapes.

The radial needle produces the first engraving operation - transferring the pattern from paper to metal. The plate on which the drawing must be transferred is fixed motionlessly on a special pillow. Resin heated in a vessel can serve as such a pillow, as is done when chasing. After that, a thin layer of wax is placed on the workpiece. A drawing made with a pencil on tracing paper is placed on the wax with the front side and lightly pressed down, which leaves an imprint on the wax. This operation could look like this: a wooden stick with a pointed end is drawn along the lines of the drawing. When the paper is removed, the indented lines of the translated drawing remain on the wax.

The final stage of work on the decoration with niello and engraving was the niello itself.

Niello on ancient Russian jewelry varies in density and tone. Sometimes it looks black and velvet, sometimes it looks like a silvery gray with a slate sheen. It depends on the various formulations, the subtleties of which we could only penetrate as a result of chemical quantitative analysis. Since such an analysis requires a significant amount of niello and the partial destruction of an ancient thing, this way of research cannot be used.

Already in the X century. we meet with silver items decorated with a niello pattern. V. I. Sizov singled out among the Gnezdov materials plaques of Russian work, with a background filled with niello. The niello ornament adorns the already mentioned turium horn from the Black Grave.

The composition of the black mass includes: silver, lead, red copper, sulfur, potash, borax, salt. Usually this mixture is stored in powder form.

Until the end of the XII century. niello art was dominated by a black background and light relief figures on it.

4.2 INLAY

4.3 GILDING TECHNIQUE

In products of the IX-X centuries. Gilding is used very widely, playing an important role in decorating various products.

The oldest monument should be considered a fragment of a copper plate from Kiev with a gold pattern depicting a city with a part of the fortress wall, a tower, a boat with a high curved prow and a crowd of soldiers with spears and shields. Warriors are beardless, beardless, their hair is cut in a circle. It is quite possible that, unlike other church doors that have come down to us, the Kiev fragment belonged to the door of a secular palace, since the images on it are devoid of any admixture of churchness.

The invention of gold writing freed the artist from the tedious physical work involved in inlay work, allowing him the freedom to create intricate and intricate patterns and compositions.

5. WIRE DRAWING, FILIGREE AND GRAIN

Rice. 15. Preparation of hryvnias (Kiev).

The modern soldering technique uses the following compositions of solders, which, in all likelihood, were used in antiquity, since their constituent parts were known:

1. Tin - 5 parts Lead - 3 parts

2. Copper - 30 to 50 parts Zinc - 25 to 46 parts Silver - 4 to 45 parts (Recipe for soldering copper)

3. Silver - 4 parts Red copper - 1 part (Recipe for soldering silver)

4. Gold - 10 parts Silver - 6 parts Copper - 4 parts (Recipe for soldering gold)

The melting of metals began with low-melting metals and was carried out in crucibles. The resulting alloy was ground into powder (file) and used for soldering.

One of the uses of filigree was the ornamentation of gold and silver planes on large items such as icon frames, kokoshniks, large kolts and barms.

CONCLUSION

Male blacksmiths were engaged in casting from silver and bronze, creating real works of art. Jewelry work in the Old Russian state was not limited to casting. Many cast items were decorated with unique engraved and chased patterns and inlaid with precious stones. The uniqueness of the jewelry traditions of Ancient Russia lay in the versatility of the craftsmen who knew how to work with all known techniques.

LIST OF USED LITERATURE

1. Artsikhovsky A. V. Novgorod crafts. - In the book: Novgorod historical collection. Novgorod, 1939.

2. Vasilev V., Mitanov P. Conservation for finds from a coffin of the 4th c. in Silistra Museums and cultural monuments. Sofia, 1974, book. one.

3. Gubanova E. The origin of jewelry art in Ancient Russia. [ Electronic resource]. - Access mode: http://www.suvenirka-ural.ru/statji/zarozhdenie-yuvelirnogo-iskusstva .

4. “Ancient Russia. City, castle, village" under the general. ed. B.A. Rybakov. Moscow, "Nauka", 1985.

5. Zabelin I. E. On metal production in Russia until the end of the 17th century. -- CJSC, 1853, v. V.

6. Kondakov N. P. Russian treasures: A study of antiquities of the grand ducal period. SPb., 1896.

7. Makarova T.I. "Niger business of Ancient Russia". Moscow, Nauka, 1986.

8. Rybakov B.A. - Craft of Ancient Russia, edition of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1958, 784 p.

9. Ryndina N. V. Technology of production of Novgorod jewelers X - XV centuries. - MIA, 1963.

10. Sedova M.V. "Jewellery of Ancient Novgorod (X - XV centuries)" - MIA, 1959.

11. Flerov A. V. Artistic processing of metals. M., 1976, p. 63.

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