Metalwork

D

2

European Copper and Brass

Copper was also important as the base for champlevé enamel plaques in the Middle Ages and later, for its softness facilitated the excavation of small areas to be filled with colored glass pastes. Copper is an ingredient, with zinc, of brass. In the Middle Ages in the town of Dinant (now in Belgium), large brass dishes with raised decoration were produced and exported in considerable quantities, although the Netherlands was the most prolific producer of brasswares. Brass was similarly used in the Islamic East for large dishes and braziers. Eastern craftsmen who settled in Venice in the 15th century produced exceptionally well-wrought bowls, ewers, dishes, and candlesticks damascened with elaborate oriental decoration in gold and silver; their method was continued by Venetian artisans using Renaissance styles of decoration after the middle of the 16th century. Large brass chandeliers designed to hold numerous candles were made in the Netherlands and England in the 17th century and were to be found in the early colonial homes in North America in the 18th century; brass drawer pulls were also popular on furniture in the colonies. Brass has survived into the 20th century in the form of such fixtures as door knockers, doorsills, letter boxes, candlesticks, and andirons.

E

Lead and Pewter

The Romans, who had a superabundance of lead from their silver-refining activities, used lead primarily for utilitarian purposes—roofs, coffins, water cisterns, conduits, and plumbing.

E

1

Lead

Lead is exceptionally soft and easily worked and was used in the Middle Ages in Europe for external architectural decoration. In England it was used extensively for the pipeheads of rainwater guttering and for roof coverings. From the 12th to the 15th century, lead baptismal fonts with cast raised decoration were produced. In the 17th century, lead garden statues became popular and remained in favor into the 18th century. During the 16th century, cast lead plaquettes were made in Germany by goldsmiths and silversmiths who specialized in supplying designs to other goldsmiths; they exported these plaquettes of the latest designs—both abstract and pictorial—to many parts of Europe. These plaquettes, which reproduced faithfully all the details of the carved-wood or soft-stone originals, are now collected as works of art in their own right.

E

2

Pewter

Tin was available to the Romans both from their possessions in the Iberian Peninsula and in the British Isles. It was an important ingredient in bronze, but when mixed with lead (first in the 3rd century ad ) it produced the first pewter. A few hundred pieces of Roman pewter, however, are all that remain. No other early pewter, from Roman times until the 14th century, is known, except for the chalices and patens found in priests' tombs at Metz, France. Pewter, however, was probably made in some quantity. Churches too poor to own silver communion plates were allowed to use pewter after the 11th century; it was a flourishing craft when it came to be regulated in the 14th century in England. Pewter was commonly used for the eating and drinking vessels of the lower classes all over Europe, except in Spain. The metal is silver-colored when new and dulls to a pleasing, lustrous gray. In form, it was made in the usual shapes for pottery or silver and tended to rely on proportion and appropriateness rather than on decoration for its appeal. Some pewter, however, was decorated in the 16th and 17th centuries with cast motifs, particularly on the lids and handles of tankards; in Germany, Switzerland, and Scandinavia incised decoration or undulating lines made with a wheel were popular.

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American pewter is highly prized by collectors for its amplitude and dignity, as well as for its connection with the country's early history. Dates and the initials of the owners are often found on it. Old pewter is comparatively rare, for it was the established practice everywhere to take old or deformed pieces back to the pewterer as part payment toward new purchases. Pewter was largely supplanted by silvered base metals in the 19th century, although it has reappeared in the present century for household items such as tankards and flatware.

F

Iron

Small pieces of jewelry of meteoric iron have been found in Egyptian tombs, and no doubt the metal was for long treasured as an occasional find. The Hittites of Anatolia, however, appear to have been the first (c. 1400 bc) to understand and control the production of iron from its ores. This gave them a temporary military advantage over their neighbors in the superior weapons they made from iron. For such a versatile, functional, and strong metal, iron has had a surprisingly consistent history of use for artistic and decorative purposes.

The Chinese were the first to cast iron; from the 6th century ad they used cast-iron supports for buildings and for multistory pagodas. In Europe, iron was wrought—that is, hammered into shape when hot—by a special group of workers now called blacksmiths. Blacksmiths wrought coffers and weapons and made such large items of furnishings as great knockers and ring handles for the immense doors of castles and cathedrals as well as beautifully scrolled bands for strengthening doors. Wrought-iron railings, with superbly detailed work that looks almost like lace from a distance, was popular in the 17th and 18th centuries. Steel armor was often highly decorative, with splendid engraved or acid-etched motifs in the 16th century. The armorers who wrought them used a steel derived from iron and employed many of the hot forging techniques that were pioneered by blacksmiths over the centuries. After the Arts and Crafts movement was introduced in the mid-19th century, some exceptional wrought-iron work was produced in England.

Cast iron appears to have been introduced into Europe from knowledge of the Chinese success with it. For a long time, it had few artistic uses, although the cast firebacks introduced in the 15th century remained popular for some 200 years. In Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavia, and the Netherlands, cast rectangular plates for wood-burning, enclosed stoves were also made, often decorated in relief at the moment of their casting from prepared molds with pictorial or abstract ornament. Toward the end of the 18th century, wrought iron began to be replaced by less costly cast iron for railings, balconies, banisters, and for garden furniture and decorations; this manufactured work, once considered as intrinsically bad and devoid of artistic merit, has come to have a certain appeal to present-day collectors.

See also Bell; Coins and Coin Collecting; Crown; Enamel; Flatware; Inlay; Jewelry; Sculpture; Sword