A silversmith's hands drive a punch with a hammer across a hammered metal dish, the punches lined up on the bench alongside.

Handmade objects and craftsmanship

Silversmithing

Silver is the metal of the house. While gold lives on people — rings, necklaces, ornaments for the body — silver has for centuries dressed the tables and the domestic rooms of well-off families: trays, cutlery services, candelabra, travelling cups, liturgical objects. It is a craft closely related to goldsmithing, and it shares many of its movements, but it lives in a world of its own: larger dimensions, broader gestures, a finish that is less minute and more theatrical.

A stone alley with a workshop's open door and a barred window: metal vessels gleam inside, and a bell tower closes the view.

Where

Where it is practised in Tuscany

In Tuscany silversmithing has its historic concentrations in Firenze, where since the late sixteenth century the workshops of the silversmiths lived alongside those of the goldsmiths on the Ponte Vecchio and in the alleyways beside it, and in Arezzo, where one of the main Italian goldsmithing districts has its base. Pistoia has a smaller but documented tradition of liturgical silverware, tied to commissions from parishes and convents. Signature workshops also exist in Pisa, Siena and Livorno, where individual silversmiths carry the craft forward with private clients and specific commissions.

A hammered metal sheet on the bench with two hammers, a row of punches, a wooden mallet and a leather chasing cushion.

How

The techniques of the craft

The techniques of silversmithing are cousins to those of goldsmithing, but on a different scale. Repoussé — shaping the silver sheet from the reverse with punches and hammer — produces the reliefs on trays, chalices and boxes. Chasing finishes the front. Silver filigree — fine wires twisted together — decorates favour boxes, crosses and devotional objects. Casting produces handles, bases and structural elements. Burnishing gives the mirror shine, and controlled oxidation produces the patinated silver that many collectors prefer. The finest silver workshops keep their own alloy recipes — pure silver is too soft and must be alloyed with copper in precise proportions to obtain sterling 925 or 800 silver — along with tempering procedures that each family guards.

A craftsman at his bench in a workshop with tall windows, among boards of hanging tools and silver vessels set out on the tops.

Now

The craft today

Doing it today means standing in a market that has narrowed but not disappeared. The silver-laid table is less present in contemporary homes, and silver cutlery is thought of as something belonging to a grandmother or a wedding. But there is a qualified segment — the restoration of historic and family silver, devotional objects for churches and collectors, the important gift for anniversaries and ceremonies — that keeps the real workshops standing. Much of the work is by commission: a design shared with the client, prototypes, a personalised finish. The real difficulty is the price of the raw material, which has risen steeply over recent decades and pushes every silversmith towards precise calculation and carefully weighed production.