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Word of the Week: Repousse and Chasing

July 17, 2014 in Uncategorized by hdavis

Victorian sterling silver kettle on stand, Richard Martin & Ebenezer Hall London, dated 1877, floral repousse-chased vessel with bird finialThis week, it’s two for one! Malleable metals – copper, gold, silver, for example – primarily exhibit two essentially opposite techniques of shaping: repoussé and chasing. Repousse, a French word which means “pushed up,” is accomplished by hammering the back side of the sheet of metal to “push up” a design in relief. Chasing, also from French – chasser meaning to drive out or chase around – is simply the opposite: pressure applied to the front of an object to create a design by lowering portions of the metal below the surface. Most objects have both repousse and chasing (like the Martin & Hall Victorian sterling silver kettle on stand pictured here) as well as the third primary method of metal decoration, engraving.

There are a variety of techniques for accomplishing repousse and chasing, but traditionally, the work was done with the aid of pitch or resin. The object would be placed on or, in the case of hollowware, surrounded by (or in the case of chasing, filled with), pitch, which would help soften and regulate the impact of any force applied by hammering. Then the pitch would be removed, the work would be reviewed and adjusted if necessary, and the pitch would be applied again for subsequent workings. Despite the time-consuming nature of the work, repousse and chasing are very cost-effective, as no metal is actually removed.

Traditionally, this was done with the aid of pitch or resin. The object would be placed on or, in the case of hollowware, surrounded by (or in the case of chasing, filled with), pitch, which would help soften and regulate the impact of any force applied by hammering. Then the pitch would be removed, the work would be reviewed and adjusted if necessary, and the pitch would be applied again for subsequent workings. Despite the time-consuming nature of the work, repousse is very cost-effective, as no metal is actually removed.

Word of the Week: Damascus Steel

July 9, 2014 in Firearms, Word of the Week by hdavis

An early Parker Brothers No. 2 lifter hammer shotgun with original case and accessories. Damascus steel is yet another example of a term’s original definition becoming almost inextricably conflated with a different concept. Damascus steel, used historically in blades manufactured in Middle East, is also a bit of a mystery. The process, as best we can tell, started with wootz steel, a type of steel which appears to have originated in India approximately 300 years B.C. Beyond that, we have no idea how it was originally crafted. The origin of the name Damascus itself is a bit of a puzzle, as it is also unknown if it was first used for swords made or sold in Damascus or if it was applied based on a perceived connection between the appearance of the steel and Damask cloth, which also derives its name from Damascus.

Perhaps it is this mystery or the distinctive appearance of Damascus steel, which is said to look like flowing water or watered silk because of the banded look of the surface, but Damascus steel has a reputation filled with legends about its sharpness and durability. Many tests have been performed on original examples of Damascus steel, but because there are so many variables in the production process – raw materials, techniques, equipment – efforts to replicate the steel have failed. True Damascus steel production seems to have stopped around the middle of the 18th century for reasons lost to us now, but historians offer a number of hypotheses, including the possibility of a trade route disruption (such a lengthy route, India to the Middle East, could have quite possibly have been disturbed long enough and to such an extent that the technique was lost in the interim), a change in the manufacturing process that removed the necessary impurities, or simply an obsessive degree of secrecy regarding the tricks of production.­­­­­

Regardless of the reasons, pattern welded steel blades offer the closest replication, at least in terms of appearance. Pattern welding, which is similar to laminating steel and has been done since the Middle Ages, is accomplished by forge welding a group of different metals together and then twisting and manipulating them to create the appearance of a patterned surface. Blades and barrels formed by this technique (or from laminated or piled steel) are also often referred to as Damascus, even though the production process is completely different. Historians attributed this to bladesmith William Moran, who debuted his “Damascus knives” in 1973. Early on, there appears to have been some distinction in the use of the term “Modern Damascus,” but for the most part, weapons, historic and modern, with barrels and blades forged by pattern welding are also simply referred to as Damascus.

Meanwhile, experts in the field of experimental archaeology continue to try to unravel the secrets of Damascus steel production. As for us, true Damascus steel is rare enough that, with the additional restriction of adequate detail photographs, the picture above shows pattern welded steel, although you can see an cannon with a Damascus barrel here.

Word of the Week: Grisaille

June 26, 2014 in Paintings, Pottery & Porcelain, Word of the Week by hdavis

Grisaille, from the French word gris meaning grey, is a term used to describe works of art painted entirely in a monochromatic palette. Technically speaking, there are other terms that apply when the monochromatic palette used is of a different color (brunaille for brown, verdaille for green, for instance), but grisaille is often misused to cover all monochrome works, regardless of hue. There are also plenty of works that are considered grisaille that are not perfectly, strictly speaking, in just one color, but the palette is severely curtailed.

Works “en grisaille” as they are usually referred to can be done as finished works, but they are also used to mimic the three-dimensional effect of sculpture in a tromp l’oeil style, to provide a basis for adaptation by engravers or illustrators, or to “rough in” an oil painting’s structure.

In the world of antiques, grisaille is often seen in connection with the decoration on Chinese export porcelain (sometimes the entire work is decorated en grisaille, sometimes only a portion), and the value there is derived from age and condition, but works executed completely en grisaille do frequently see a bump in value. In terms of fine art, the highest prices are reserved for early artists like Van Dyck who were known for their use of the technique, but grisaille works are, in general, popular and appealing because it’s generally conceded that working with a full palette can hide some weakness in skill and execution, whereas such a limited palette requires a more skillful hand.

Word of the Week: Sgraffito

June 11, 2014 in Pottery & Porcelain, Word of the Week by hdavis

A Conrad Mumbauer, attributed (1761 to 1845), Haycock Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, glazed sgraffito redware plate dated "1810"Sgraffito derives from graffiare (Italian for “to scratch”) and graphein (Greek for “to write”) and is yet another example of a term that has been slowly adapted (or corrupted, some might say) for use in the American marketplace. Technically and historically speaking, sgraffito is used to describe a method of fresco used on walls (amazing examples still survive on even the exteriors of old buildings throughout Europe) and a means for decorating ceramics. In terms of both fresco wall decoration and ceramics, it means applying multiple layers – plaster for walls, slip for ceramics – and then scratching the upper layer away to reveal the contrasting color.

Perhaps it is the multicolor nature of sgraffito as traditionally performed or simply the incising, scraping away an upper layer of, say, cream to reveal the layer, perhaps red, beneath, that allowed it to become tangled up with the decoration of redware pieces. Redware objects – plates, bowls, chargers, even hollow ware pieces like jars, were frequently decorated with multiple colors of slip and glaze, most commonly cream, yellow, red, and green. The technique in American redware is most frequently associated with the Germanic populations known as Pennsylvania Dutch (more appropriately Pennsylvania Germans and more accurately of the general mid-Atlantic region) and the Moravians who settled in Pennsylvania and the southeastern United States. Both populations used traditional Germanic decorative motifs: birds, tulips, hearts and animals. In this version of sgraffito, designs are incised into “leather-hard” clay, clay that has hardened but can still be worked in limited ways, and then the pieces are fired. While there is an element of “scratching” and the surface often has multiple colors, one layer of color is not removed to expose another, but rather the slip is scratched away to reveal the clay body.

American sgraffito-decorated redware has great appeal among collectors, interesting pottery collectors as well as folk art buyers and is exponentially more popular than European redware. As with all pottery, desirability has to do with form and condition, but sgraffito is, in and of itself, very rare. While sales of large collections like the Shelley collection can skew the perception of availability, in reality, very few pieces appear on the market each year. Meanwhile, however, folks like Lester Breininger offer incredible reproduction pieces!

Word of the Week: Dovetail

May 19, 2014 in Furniture, Word of the Week by hdavis

Furniture: A Chippendale blanket chest, Pennsylvania, late 18th century, walnut, pine, and poplar. Dovetailed case, two drawers, and bracket feet.Examining a piece of furniture is like examining a crime scene – forensics play a role in unraveling puzzles about the who, what, where, when, how of each object. One of the “fingerprints” commonly found in pieces of furniture is the dovetail joint (also known just as dovetail or, in Europe, often called a swallowtail or fantail joint). The photograph here shows the front corner of a drawer in a chest. The chest itself is also dovetailed. While no one really knows how old the dovetail joint is, some of the earliest examples are from pieces found in ancient tombs, both in China and in Egypt.

Dovetails are used in the construction of furniture as well as buildings as joining techniques in a way that offers impressive tensile strength. A dovetailed joint is like interlaced, interlocking fingers. (They’re technically referred to as “pins” and “tails.”) These fingers have a wedge or trapezoidal form and are glued together when finished, meaning an entire piece of furniture – or even an entire log cabin – can be assembled without so much as a single nail!

While most catalogers rarely make the distinction, dovetails can be accomplished in several ways – through, half-blind, secret mitered, sliding and full blind. In specific instances with a large enough body of work to compare, they can link objects to a particular cultural group, a specific shop or even identify the hand of a particular maker. (For instance, English dovetails are often perceived to be finer and more delicate, while Germanic ones tend to be seen as wider and more robust, but even this changes over time and in communities where both populations worked together or other factors influenced the practices of a local shop.)

In the early days of more industrial furniture production, dovetails were still handcut, banged out from templates in the kind of repetitive work that fell to apprentices and journeymen, but by the early 20th century, factories had figured out how to cut dovetail pin and tail wedges with machines. Around this same time, machine-cut joints, fashioned with rectangular pins and tails versus the traditional wedges, began to appear. While occasionally misidentified, these are technically not dovetails, as dovetails draw their very name from their wedge-like resemblance to a bird’s tail, but finger joints.

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