What Is Silversmithing?
Silversmithing is often confused with blacksmithing, at least insofar as technique is concerned. It is generally understood that a silversmith works with silver and a blacksmith with iron. After that the popular imagination has the silversmith pounding and carving away at hot silver, just like a blacksmith. However, except in a few and uncommon examples, silversmithing is a trade that works solid metal at normal temperatures.
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Identification
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Silversmithing is the trade of fashioning objects from silver. It closely overlaps with goldsmithing, with the two trades essentially being a professional distinction. The skills used are identical, and while gold is softer than silver, it makes for only minor differences in smithing technique.
The Silversmithing Process
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Silversmiths work in a very different fashion from blacksmiths. Iron is hard enough that it must be red hot in order to be worked. Silver is soft enough that it it does not need that, and can be worked at room temperature. A silversmith makes things by taking a sheet or plate of silver, and through the use of hand tools like hammers, chisels and stakes, pounds and carves the silver into the desired object. Silversmithing is very much about the precise, patient and careful use of a moderate amount of force. Another silversmithing technique does involve using hot, molten silver, which is poured into a wax mold for casting.
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Silver vs. Gold in Smithing
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As a working material, gold is softer and easier to work with than silver. This is usually the case even when it is heavily diluted, low carat gold. However, gold is also much more expensive. Apprentice goldsmiths often train using silver, as do many jewelers who are setting out as independent craftsman. Master silversmiths and master goldsmiths have achieved the same level of skill and are virtually interchangeable.
Silver Objects
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While gold is more desired than silver in jewelry, the fact that silver jewelry is cheaper makes it arguably more popular. Furthermore it is very rare to find goldsmithed plates, bowls, statues and other objects due to the high cost of gold. Silver, on the other hand, is still a precious metal, but is cheap enough to make these objects.
Silversmithing Around the World
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Silversmithing is an international trade. As a trade, it can be found as widely spread as in guilds in Western Europe, independent craftsmen in Western Canada and as a tribal art in Central Indonesia.
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Resources
- Photo Credit Wikimedia Commons
