Palermitan Goldsmith-Silversmith Art

Historically in Sicily the goldsmith and silverware art sector represents a strongly connoted reality. Along a path of millennia, knowledge has been acquired and handed down, still used daily, which thanks to the artisanal dimension preserved in Palermo, are still applied and applicable allowing the commission of unique pieces or small series without the constraints and parameters of industrial production. Everything results from an exceptional combination of events that have kept the industrialization of the sector at a safe distance and have favored a close correlation with the territory, preserving part of the location of the shops and structures of the supply chain (founders, turners, engravers, engravers) at the inside the historic center, often on the same roads.

The capital of Sicily boasts many precious rarities. Here there are numerous workshops and some silversmiths factories, still able today to o ff er products refined by conception and manual execution, perpetuating without interruption an art that dates back to prehistoric times. This aspect is testified by the rich collections of local museums, such as the archaeological one, named after A. Salinas, or the Regional Gallery of Palazzo Abatellis or, again, the numerous Diocesan Museums. The University of Palermo has created the Observatory of Decorative Arts in Italy, which for some time has been carrying out an accurate cataloging and dissemination of this heritage, continuing the work of a great scholar of the sector, Maria Accascina. Finally, the Arces Goldsmith School, where new master craftsmen were trained, young people with innovative ideas to whom the old masters patiently passed on the tricks of the trade.

The artistic production of the goldsmiths and silversmiths of Palermo is characterized by the permanence and continuation of the profession of "workshop" of the goldsmith and silversmith, still alive today thanks to the "knowledge" of elderly masters present mostly in the area of Historic Center of Palermo.

In the organization of the workshop work there is the separation of the processing phases that goes from the preparation of all the necessary material (foils, wires, grains and brazing) to the actual creation (processing, finishing and polishing).

The main techniques of goldsmithing and silverware still present in the Palermo workshops are divided into main ones (Graduation) and in secondary (finishing, decoration) and I'm: lost wax casting which involves casting the molten metal into a cavity left free by a model made of wax; matrix casting where the metal liquefied at very high temperature is poured from the crucible into a matrix which reproduces in negative the object to be obtained; embossing and chisel which are decorative techniques of metals without removing material, which create volumes through a deformation obtained with chisels (embossing) or impress the design by working from the right (chisel);granulation (goldsmith) which consists in decorating by welding, on a prepared piece, tiny spheres of precious metal in order to obtain even complex designs; filigree which uses reduced wire in order to obtain a very thin braid, which will subsequently be flattened; brazing(goldsmith's) /welding (silverware): a traditional hard brazing (Au + CU + AG alloy) and a liquid brazing solution (with infinitesimally reduced filler material); embedding (goldsmith's), which consists in the assembly of precious stones on the metal support through the use of the burin for setting; filing and polishing (goldsmith / silverware), an action aimed at refining the object using brushes, abrasive papers or files of different sizes.

Among the masters active in the Palermo panorama we remember, just to name a few, the silversmith Antonino Amato, the silversmith Piero Accardi, the silversmith Emilio Marchesini, the engraver Benito Gelardi, the goldsmith Giuseppe Amodeo, the goldsmith Pietro Maniscalco, the jeweler Giorgio Fecarotta, the jeweler Silvano Barraja.

 

Compare cards: