Iron-wire in France is called fil d’ Archal; and the artists there have an idea, which is not improbable, that this appellation took its rise from one Richard Archal, who either invented or first established the art of drawing iron-wire in that country. The expression fil de Richard is therefore used also among the French wire-drawers[1278]. Of this Archal, however, we know as little as of the Nuremberg Rudolf; and Menage will not admit the above derivation. He is of opinion that fil d’Archal is compounded of the Latin words filum and aurichalcum[1279].
To conclude this article, I shall add a few observations respecting filigrane works and spangles. The first name signifies a kind of work of which one can scarcely form a proper idea from a description. Fine gold and silver wire, often curled or twisted in a serpentine form, and sometimes plaited, are worked through each other and soldered together so as to form festoons, flowers and various ornaments; and in many places also they are frequently melted together by the blowpipe into little balls, by which means the threads are so entwisted as to have a most beautiful and pleasant effect. This work was employed formerly much more than at present in making small articles, which served rather for show than for use; such as needle-cases, caskets to hold jewels, small boxes, particularly shrines, decorations for the images of saints and other church furniture. Work of this kind is called filagrame, filigrane, ouvrage de filigrane; and it may be readily perceived that these words are compounded of filum and granum. We are told in the Encyclopédie that the Latins called this work “opus filatim elaboratum,” but this is to be understood as alluding to the latest Latin writers; for filatim occurs only once in Lucretius, who applies it to woollen thread.
This art, however, is of great antiquity, and appears to have been brought to Europe from the East. Grignon informs us that he found some remains of such work in the ruins of the Roman city before-mentioned[1280]. Among church furniture we meet with filigrane works of the middle ages. There was lately preserved in an abbey at Paris, a cross ornamented with filigrane work, which was made by St. Eloy, who died in 665; and the greater part of the works of that saint are decorated in the like manner[1281]. In the collection of relics at Hanover is still to be seen a cross embellished with this kind of work, which is said to be as old as the eleventh or twelfth century[1282]. The Turks, Armenians and Indians make at present master-pieces of this sort, and with tools exceedingly coarse and imperfect. Marsden extols the ingenuity of the Malays on the same account[1283]; and articles of the like nature, manufactured at Deccan, are, we are told, remarkably pretty, and cost ten times the price of the metal employed in forming them[1284]. This art is now neglected in Europe, and little esteemed. Augsburg, however, a few years ago had a female artist, Maria Euphros. Reinhard, celebrated for works of this kind, who died in 1779. In 1765 she ornamented with filigrane work some silver basons, which were sent to Russia for the use of the church, and which gained her great honour[1285].
Spangles, paillettes, are small, thin, round leaves of metal, pierced in the middle, which are sewed on as ornaments; and though they are well-known, it might be difficult for those who never saw them manufactured, or read an account of the manner in which they are prepared, to conceive how they are made. The wire is first twisted round a rod into the form of a screw; it is then cut into single spiral rings, like those used by pin-makers in forming heads to their pins; and these rings being placed upon a smooth anvil are flattened by a smart stroke of the hammer, so that a small hole remains in the middle, and the ends of the wire which lie over each other are closely united. I remember to have seen on old saddle-cloths and horse-furniture large plates of this kind; but the small spangles seem to be of later invention. According to Lejisugo[1286], whose real name I do not know, they were first made in the French gold and silver manufactories, and imitated in Germany, for the first time, in the beginning of the seventeenth century. The method of preparing them was long kept a secret.
FOOTNOTES
[1243] Exodus, chap. xxxix. ver. 3.—Braun, De Vestitu Sacerdotum Hebræorum, p. 173.
[1244] Homer, Odyss. lib. viii. 273, 278.—Ovid. Metamorph. lib. iv. 174.
[1245] Lib. xxxiv. cap. 8.
[1246] Lib. xxxiii. cap. 4.—Aldrovandus relates, in his Museum Metallicum, that the grave of the wife of the emperor Honorius was discovered at Rome about the year 1544, and that thirty-six pounds of gold were procured from the mouldered dress which contained the body.
[1247] Cicero de Nat. Deor. iii. 34, 83.—Valer. Max. i. 1. exter. § 3.