CHAPTER I
THE METAL AND ITS ALLOYS
Ancient bronze—The bronzes of Greece, Rome, and Eastern nations—Copper for enamels—The brass of commerce—Bell metal—The sources of copper—The making of brass—Copper as an alloy—The characteristics of metals.
The coppersmith has taken a prominent place among the craftsmen of all nations, and at all periods, and in not a few instances he has been acknowledged as an artist of no mean order. The material upon which he has worked has been copper and its alloys and compounds. From this metal have been produced many valuable antiques, and among the work of the coppersmith of more recent days there are objects of intense interest and of great beauty. In this work many collectable objects have been classified, and in the different groups of metal-work referred to attention is drawn to these beautiful and sometimes quaint reminders of past generations, and also to some of the most notable non-collectable metal-work which may be seen and admired in museums and art galleries, and to a few of the copper monuments, memorials, and historic relics which are gazed at by the curious, oftentimes without thought of the materials of which they are composed.
Ancient Bronze.
The raw material, copper, smelted and beaten or poured from a crucible into moulds, was in more ancient times used in its unalloyed purity—and it is still used in that state. It was, however, soon discovered that copper might be improved for many purposes by mixing with it other metals possessing different properties. The prehistoric peoples who lived in Britain, and in other countries within reach, soon added tin, which was found in Cornwall quite near to the surface, and was from early times sold to Phœnician traders, thereby producing bronze. It is of this metal that most of the much valued curios of the so-called Bronze Age are made. Those who fashioned them were clever manipulators of the alloyed metal, and by processes now little understood were able to temper tools and weapons and to give them keen-cutting edges. Our museums are full of spear-heads, celts, axes, and palstaves of bronze, which were cast in moulds of stone cut to the required shapes by those primitive workers in metal, who used simple crucibles in which it was melted.
FIG. 2 (1).—BRONZE BUCKLER FROM THE THAMES VALLEY.
FIG. 3 (2).—ANOTHER BUCKLER FROM ABERYSTWYTH.
(In the British Museum.)