A digital archive showcasing the extensive collection of jewellery and adornment images shared on the former Ethnic Jewels Ning site over the years. These images have significantly enriched discussions on cultural adornment and its global dispersion.
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What a great experience Cordelia. Thanks for putting up some of the photos you took. I love this one. But when I saw it, I couldn't help feeling the urge to go and find my silver cloth. Did you ask the curator about the way they stored their items?
Some of the pieces do look as though they are made of a silver alloy, and it has been firmly established that a number of those that superficially look like not containing any silver at all actually do. I am not implying that non-silver items were not made - only pointing out that we often too readily think that a Bulgarian piece contains no silver simply because superficially it doesn't seem to. This is particularly true of heavily patinated - usually quite old - pieces, such as have in recent times appeared on the market in considerable numbers. Lynn Ardent/Ayres has had a good many tested that did turn out to contain silver (usually not as a large percentage of the alloy).
Of course if these were x-rayed we must accept the results! But the idea that no silver was EVER used is definitely wrong, because by now quite a lot of testing has revealed otherwise. It is a widespread misconception - so much so that I was surprised to hear from Lynn how many pieces actually did contain at least some silver. There was, someone in the region informed me, a special combination which was quite frequently employed (I cannot now remember its name): this containied normaly something like 20% silver, with the remainder copper. The 20% was quite sufficient to create the (arguably correct) impression that the material was a cheap "silver alloy" rather than any other alloy. But with 80% copper you would soon get the effect of something like "bronze", particularly if the piece was not very frequently polished. Many insist that actually if 80% is copper we should speak of a copper alloy!
Ah, yes - I had forgotten about the arsenic! You did mention that in your original post. Very interesting. That would explain why an onlooker might think there IS silver in the alloy. Of course I fully accept the results of the investigation. My general point was really that a good many different alloys were used. There were no official rules and regulations that covered their composition, as in e.g. the case of sterling.
Silver was definitely used in many low-silver Bulgarian jewels, but I know there were arsenical bronzes as well. I would be a little surprised if all the pieces from the British Museum had no silver content. Here are some examples with x-ray results from a metals smelter near me.
Joost, the bracelets you picked and I bought are in the 4.5% silver ones. :) They are silverish-colored when cleaned even at that low percentage, the sun is starting to come back to the pacific northwest and I will finally take the photos in the next few weeks.
What a great post, Lynn. I didn't myself know about the use of arsenic for some reason (strangely I never read about it!), so that was a surprise to me, but I must admit that, even allowing for that, I too wondered whether ALL the BM examples excluded silver, particularly in the light of your discovery (one may truly well call it yours) that even pieces of which people like myself were convinced that they were just bronze often, even so, included a small quantity of silver. In view of it being, in the case of the ones I picked for the experiment you embarked on, no more than about 4.5%, I rather feel "excused" - but even so, no doubt the piece did look slightly silverish when first made, and we should be exact about these things. What you have shown has been really revealing in view of the fact that the opinion that many of the objects were "just" bronze was the common one until you steered us in a different reaction. The armband with 4.53% silver below is a very typical example of an alleged "bronze only" type - I seem to remember that we discussed one which I had which had that shape: it is one that I would not myself subject to any treatment as it has in a way been "enamelled" (whichever way the colours were put on the surface!) and its patina is too rich. But your point remains, for sure! Cordelia: have ALL the BM examples been fully tested? For I agree with Lynn that it would be very surprising if not one of them contained at least SOME silver. Lynn has tested a very large number, with spectacular results, in my view!
I failed to mention below that if an object is made of 4.53% silver and 95.47% copper it will, indeed, originally look slightly silverish, especially as copper changes its colour very quickly when other metals are added (hence the "brass/bronze" look of many copper alloys containing copper and one or more base metals). However, if the alloy is one that contains so small an amount of silver as in the case of this bracelet, the 95.47% copper content will find its way to "revenge": as the piece tarnishes up, it will change drastically, and over time to come to look very much like bronze. That is what has had so many of us overlook the possibility of silver being used in such an alloy! All very fascinating ...
I didn't know that you had had so many items in your collection tested, Lynn. It is very difficult to find such an X-ray machine here. I think the nearest is at the Assay Office in Birmingham. I'll see if I can get some of my Afghan pieces analysed. Many of them have been made of coin silver which is often dismissed as 'base metal'. But, of course, earlier coins did contain silver to a greater or lesser degree. I'm beginning to wonder if such an analysis could pin down the site where the piece originated.
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