Medieval Goldsmiths were one of the most important
of craftsmen because they worked in precious metals, they
worked in gold and silver Always the object of the goldsmith was to make as impressive an object for the church as he could The techniques that the golsmiths used, they
were quite varied engraving metal to produce patterns, often
floral patterns there was obviously hammering metal hammering metal from behind which is called
repousse Repousse is a French word which means to push
from the back I've chosen to use an ancient technique in
my modern designs because I love the timelessness of repousse I love the evidence of tool marks, the hand
of the maker and the intimate creation process One of the objects that fascinated me in the
exhibition was the reliquary casket of St Adrian and Natalia not only because it's an exquisite example
of medieval repousse but it's a captivating story as well where Natalia's husband is martyred and she's
so proud of his martyrdom that she carries his severed hand with her
back to sea and takes it in her bed So I thought I would replicate the techniques
that the medieval craftsmen used and make the hand, the severed hand of Adrian So this is an enlargement of St Adrian being
martyred I'm going to do a low relief of St Adrian's
hand here to show you the techniques that a medieval
craftsmen might have used to create this beautiful object I'd start with a sheet of fine silver and
cut the size piece that I need off the silver and then I would transfer the design and then
I will scribe the outline with a fine steel scribing tool so I can see where I'm going when I move over
to the chasing station There's this fascinating development of reliquaries as shaped like the parts of body that
the bone came from We've seen the parts of feet, arms, heads
or fingers presumably to enhance its value and its authority
as a relic Great, so now chasing is finished it's time to put it in the pitch pot for the
repousse So now I don't need to heat the metal because
it's already been annealed but what I do need to do is heat the pitch Pitch is basically pine resin, tallow, brick
dust and other materials melted into this compound that when it's heated
becomes sticky as tar and when it's cold it's hard as wood The idea of pitch is that it gives you a resistant
surface to do the repousse work into without hammering
the metal flat like a steel block would So that's why I've inverted the piece in the
pitch I'm going to work from the reverse of it,
the negative I'm going to push the relief down into the
pitch and hope that from experience that it's going
to look something like the finished relief that's
my objective This is a fantastic reliquary of St Anastasia the structure is of silver but it's decorated
partly with gilding and partly with niello Niello is a silver sulphide that hardens and
looks rather like a sort of black enamel The doors would actually open so that the faithful
could actually see the relic inside And each of them is decorated, each door is
decorated with crosses and exquisite little knobs that the
priest could open The architecture is composed of openings repousse arches, doors and the little chapels
at each end Repousse is a wonderful way of working metal because you can create a relief scene from
one continuous piece of metal and materials used to work with as you've
seen are very basic and accessible and essentially unchanged since the ancient
Egyptians So it's a techniques that was used a lot in
the Middle Ages, all through history and I like to think that I carry on a little
bit of that heritage in the work that i do