Fig. 188.—Vase by Adam.
At the time of the Revolution, and immediately after, the style of the silver work deteriorated in France. Vast quantities of plate were seized and sent off to the Mint by the Revolutionary army, and naturally an art like the goldsmith’s, that ministered to the needs of luxury, was in those times at a low ebb.
Fig. 189.—Candlestick, Silver-gilt; Louis Seize. (S.K.M.)
Fig. 190.—Candlestick, Silver-gilt; Italian; Eighteenth Century. (S.K.M.)
In England in the early part of the nineteenth century some good work was executed from the designs of Flaxman and Stothard, chiefly in the classic style; the Wellington Shield may be mentioned as an example; but about the middle of this century gold and silver work was characterized by even a greater degree of naturalism in design than that of the French debased style from which it was copied. Nothing could exceed the vulgarity and bad taste in the design of silversmiths’ work made about fifty or forty years ago. All architectural principles that should guide the design of relief modelling and construction were thrown to the winds, and naturalism unnaturally applied and mixed in any heterogeneous way was quite fashionable. For instance, we have huge épergnes where stags and other animals from the Highlands of Scotland or the Welsh mountains are decorating silver rock-work from which the tropical palms of Africa are seen to grow out of their clefts, affording grateful shade to the natives of the British moorland. The art of the silversmith in England about this period had suffered more than any other artistic industry, and in the matter of design it seemed to have reached the twilight state of semi-insanity, and was utterly devoid of any artistic merit.
A great improvement is, however, to be seen in the work of respectable firms and in that of many private craftsmen of to-day, but many shop windows are still filled with costly work in the precious metals that are worthless from an artistic point of view.
Niello-work and Damascening.
Niello-work has been mentioned on a previous page. It was an important branch of the goldsmith’s art, as well as that of damascening. From the earliest times the nations of antiquity have engraved on metals and filled up the lines or grooves of the engraving with a black species of enamel composition—niello—or with other metals such as silver, gold, and electrum; the latter process has been called damascening, from Damascus, where gold and silver inlaid in iron or steel was practised in the tenth and eleventh centuries.