www.925-1000.com

Hello there

I have this solid silver lid dating from the 1880's and wanted to know what process was used to pierce out the design. I would have taken a guess at it being fine fretwork, but can anyone confirm this or correct me?

If it is indeed fretwork, what Victorian machines or tools would have been used at the time, and how would the craftsman have gone about creating this process?



Thank you so much

Hi welcome to the forum.

To pierce silver sheet metal or silver open fret work
I believe it was done by hand and this will give you a good idea how it was done:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TekDAfPj0MY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glgVie8rerc

I should call it a hell of job and time consuming.


Oel.

Hello there Oel

Thank you so much for taking the time to respond to my post, I really appreciate it.

The videos were fascinating and seem to be the same process as had originally been used on my piece. Is there a term for this type of fretwork, or is it simply just standard 'fretwork'?

You mentioned that you believe a hand fret saw was used for this work, could they have also used a hand-cranked fret saw, or a pedal-operated fret/ scroll saw?

My thanks again

Your welcome, it is called Piercing.
Piercing this is the art of cutting away areas of an object for a useful (as in sifters, casters etc) or for pure decoration. The early form of piercing was achieved with chisels and punches, since around 1765 it has been done with a piercing saw or in the case of mass production, dies and fly presses. See piercing: http://www.925-1000.com/silverglossary4.html
In my opinion in some cases, pending on size and shape of the silver item/sheet, perhaps a silver factory with specialized personnel could have operated a pedal driven piercing saw but I have never seen one.

Oel.

Hello there Oel

This is fabulous! Again, thank you very much for informing me about this process. I will now go off and thoroughly research this.