A goldsmith's hands at the wooden bench, a ring held between the fingers beside a coil of gold wire and a case of punches.

Handmade objects and craftsmanship

Goldsmithing

Gold is a material that demands silence. It is not worked in haste, not worked distracted, not worked in words. Tuscan goldsmithing has known this for at least eight centuries, and goes on knowing it in the workshops where the goldsmith's bench — that sloping wooden top with the skin stretched beneath it to catch every fragment of precious metal — is still the first piece of furniture you see on walking in.

A paved alley between workshops with closed wooden doors, opening at the far end onto the river and the houses perched over a bridge.

Where

Where it is practised in Tuscany

The hands that practise it in Tuscany have three main geographies, and they are three different identities. There is Firenze, where goldsmithing has lived on the Ponte Vecchio since 1593 — when Ferdinando I de' Medici drove out the butchers and replaced them with goldsmiths and silversmiths to ennoble the crossing over the Arno. There are families who have worked in the same workshops for eight or ten generations, with archives of drawings that run through the Grand Duchy, the Kingdom of Italy and the twentieth century. Then there is Arezzo, the industrial capital of Italian goldsmithing: the Arezzo district makes around sixty per cent of the country's gold jewellery, and it is here that historic artisan workshops coexist with the studios that supply the international luxury brands. Finally there is Livorno, and its ancient relationship with coral — from the seventeenth century the Jews of Livorno worked the red of the Mediterranean imported from the North African coast, turning it into necklaces, rosaries, cameos and travelling jewellery.

Files lined up on the bench with a piercing saw, tweezers, a jeweller's loupe and a sheet of gold beside a coil of golden wire.

How

The techniques of the craft

The techniques change from district to district, but the basic vocabulary stays shared. The goldsmith works in chasing when he engraves cold metal with punches and hammer; in piercing when he cuts designs out of the sheet with the saw; in filigree when he weaves fine threads of gold or silver into motifs that look like lace. He knows lost-wax casting — the wax model that burns away inside the mould, leaving the void to be filled with metal — and burnishing, which gives the finished piece that smooth, mirrored surface that marks work done well. Every family has its own alloy recipes, its own kiln temperatures, its own secrets that never make it into the manuals.

A craftsman seated with his back turned works at the bench by the window, between a wooden chest of drawers and walls of hanging tools.

Now

The craft today

Doing it today means moving between two worlds that barely touch. On one side the luxury brand looking for refined technical production, supply-chain certification, traceability of ethical gold. On the other the individual client, who walks into the workshop for a wedding ring, for a pendant to give as a gift, for the restoration of a grandfather's watch. The real workshops hold on because they can do both: they raise the technical standard for the big customers, and they keep alive the personal relationship with the people who live next door. The challenge is generational renewal — a goldsmith is formed by ten years at the bench, and it is ever rarer to find twenty-year-olds willing to give those ten years.

The producers of this craft

Anna Gioielli Anna GioielliTosi, Reggello, Firenze L'ARTE DI CREARE L'ARTE DI CREAREPracchia, Pistoia