What Is Filigree Jewellery? How It Is Made, Where It Comes From and How to Judge It

The short answer

Filigree is jewellery built from very fine gold or silver wire, usually twisted, shaped into scrolls, spirals and loops, and soldered together or onto a backing of the same metal, sometimes with tiny beads of metal set among the wires. It looks like lace, uses little metal for its size, and is made in two ways: openwork, where the wires hold each other up, and ground-supported, where they are soldered onto a thin sheet. It is one of the oldest jewellery techniques there is, with finds in Mesopotamia from around 3,000 BC, and it is still made from Portugal to India to Norway.

When you buy it, judge it on the joints, the frame and the evenness of the work rather than on weight, because most of what you pay for is skilled labour.

How filigree is made

The craft consists of curling, twisting and plaiting fine, pliable threads of metal and joining them where they touch each other and the ground, traditionally with a flux such as borax and the heat of a blowpipe, today a torch. The wire is usually the same metal as the rest of the piece, gold or silver.

Tiny beads, when they are wanted, are made by cutting wire or thin sheet into small pieces, mixing them with flux, placing them in the hollows of a pitted charcoal block and melting them; each piece pulls itself into a sphere, and no two are quite identical. The beads are set in the eyes of scrolls, at junctions, or at intervals along the wirework.

Two structural details separate durable work from fragile work. The more delicate filling is protected by a framework of stouter wire, and brooches, crosses, earrings and buttons are usually surrounded and subdivided by bands of square or flat metal, which keep the filling in shape. When you look at a piece, those frame wires are what carry the load.

Modern workshops also use computer-aided design, with patterns printed as wax or resin models, and laser cutting for precise, symmetrical parts. These are legitimate methods, but a piece made this way is not hand-built wirework, and it should be described and priced accordingly.

Filigree and granulation

Granulation is filigree's close relative: a surface covered in tiny spheres, or granules, of precious metal. It is thought to have originated in Sumer about 5,000 years ago and reached a famous peak with the Etruscans in the first millennium BC. Granules can be attached in three ways: hard soldering, fusing with heat alone, and colloidal soldering, in which a copper-salt mixture lowers the melting point at the point of contact; the copper diffuses into grain and base at about 890 °C.

Granulation needs high-purity metal. Alloys below 18 carat gold, and sterling silver, are described as unsuitable for it, which is one reason fine granulated work is expensive. Filigree, by contrast, is made in both gold and silver.

Both techniques appear in early Nordic metalwork, as our history of gold in Scandinavian culture describes; they made a great deal of visual complexity from a scarce, imported metal.

Where the great traditions are

Filigree has been made almost everywhere precious metal has been worked. The traditions a buyer is most likely to meet:

• Ancient Mediterranean: Greek and Etruscan filigree of the sixth to the third centuries BC is regarded as the technique at its most refined; examples survive in the Louvre and the British Museum.
• Early medieval Britain and Ireland: the Staffordshire Hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver, from around 700 AD and found in 2009, contains very fine filigree, and the Tara Brooch is the best-known Irish example.
• Portugal: filigree has been made there since the eighth century and reached great complexity in the seventeenth and eighteenth; gold and silver filigree, above all the filigree heart, remains a national symbol of jewellery-making.
• The wider Mediterranean: still made across Italy, Malta, North Macedonia, Albania and Greece, where pieces can be large, with several thicknesses of wire.
• India and Iran: Cuttack in Odisha has the tarakasi tradition, Karimnagar in Telangana is known for silver filigree, and in Zanjan, Iran, the craft is called malileh.
• Turkey: Midyat, in Mardin Province, is home to telkari, silver and gold wirework developed from the fifteenth century.
• Scandinavia: silver filigree brooches and buttons are made in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, often with small chains and pendants added.

Nordic filigree and the sølje

The traditional Norwegian brooch is the sølje, the piece of jewellery that belongs to the Norwegian folk-dress tradition and is worn at the neck or on the shirt front, often with the bunad. The Norwegian encyclopaedia Store norske leksikon describes many regional forms, among them the slangesølje, bolesølje and trandeimsølje, which vary from one dress district to the next.

The symbolism is specific. Many søljer carry small hanging leaves, read as ears of barley and an image of fertility and new life, a symbolism dating from before Christianity; the heart shape comes from the Middle Ages. Søljer are made in several metals, most commonly silver, often gilded, as well as brass or tin, and silver in particular was believed to protect against evil, which is reflected in the custom of giving silver as a christening gift.

Silver filigree brooches with small chains and pendants are a recognised Scandinavian form, and Norway had specialist workshops: one silversmith was active from 1889 in a firm called Norsk Filigransfabrikk. For the marks on Norwegian pieces, including the 830S standard and the crowned-lion national mark, see our Scandinavian hallmarks guide. For the Viking Age forms that modern Nordic jewellery often draws on, see our Viking jewellery guide.

How to judge a piece before you buy

Filigree rewards close inspection, ideally with a 10x loupe and good light.

• The joints: each wire should meet its neighbours cleanly, with small, neat solder joints. Flooded solder that fills the gaps, or joints that have visibly separated, are signs of hurried or damaged work.
• The frame: the outer and dividing bands should be solid and unbent, because they carry the load. A distorted frame usually means the filling has been stressed too.
• Evenness: scrolls of the same size, consistent wire thickness, and symmetrical halves where the design calls for them.
• Loose or missing elements: check hanging leaves, chains and grains; on old pieces, losses are common and affect value.
• Hand-built or not: very uniform, flat, perfectly repeated elements can indicate laser-cut or model-based production. That is not dishonest, but it should be reflected in the description and the price.
• The metal: look for a fineness mark and test before paying for gold. Gold-coloured pieces can be gilded silver; traditional Norwegian søljer, for example, are commonly made in silver, often gilded; our explainer on gold-filled, vermeil and plated jewellery covers the difference.

On value, keep expectations realistic. Because filigree is light for its size, the metal content is small, and a scrap buyer will pay only for the weight of the gold or silver; our guide to gold price per gram shows how that is worked out. A fine piece is worth buying for the work, not for the metal.

Caring for filigree

Fine wire bends and catches, so store filigree flat and on its own, not loose in a box with chains, and avoid pulling on hanging parts when you put it on or take it off. Clean it gently: open work traps polish and residue, so a soft brush and mild soapy water, followed by thorough rinsing and drying, is safer than a polishing cloth worked into the gaps. With gilded silver, avoid abrasive polishes on the gilded surface. For the general routine, see our guide to caring for fine jewellery, and for repairs, our guide to resizing and repair.

Sources

• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filigree
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granulation_(jewellery)
• snl.no/sølje
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sølje
• silvercollection.it/DICTIONARYEUHALLMARKNORWAY.html

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