Silverware embossed in ancient Rome
In the early republican age, precious metals were not valued in Rome; the Roman civilization was still tied to ancient customs and therefore people were reluctant to use gold, silver and bronze for objects that, besides their practical function, were also aesthetically beautiful. But the other peoples of the Mediterranean had already given the precious metals an economic value and Rome had to adapt. A first change came after the first Punic war where it was necessary to have a stronger coin to go to trade in the Mediterranean and then the first silver coins were minted.
The wars of conquest brought Rome into contact with the Magna Graecia and with the Hellenistic culture, causing a total change of trend. The spoils that came in large quantities brought in daily life wonderful items which could be used so, in the patrician domus, entered the silver pottery which became an indispensable element of social life.
From Greece came also the craftsmen specialized in the processing of silver and so, from the first century BC, the silver race began in Rome; the small masterpieces that skilled artisans were able to achieve with the soft silver plates, became connotative of social status. Some people come to have huge amounts of silver as Pompeus Paulinus, governor of Lower Germany, a friend of Pliny, who had 12,000 pounds, about 4 tons.
The availability of these metals, especially of silver, seems to have diminished over time, in fact although the mines of Anatolia were still active, they were not sufficient to meet the demand and so the silver came from Iberia and also from some mines that the Romans had found in Pannonia. However, often it used to merge old artifacts for creating new ones that best satisfy new tastes and fashions.
In the ancient Roman silverware, the techniques used were decisive and one of the most refined was the embossed workmanship. The embossment is an ancient technical process for the relief decoration of very malleable materials such as silver, gold, copper and bronze; to execute it, thin silver sheets were used, where the shape was obtained by chiselling, modeling large and small concavities. The processing was performed on the reverse but the details were obtained by adding the thin foils to right.
They are cantilevered most of the objects of the famous treasures of Boscoreale, of Hildesheim, of Bernay, of House of Menander in Pompeii, where Roma proves to be the heir of the art so that the magnificence of the great Hellenistic courts.
The techniques of working and the skill of the ancient goldsmiths have created masterpieces that we can still admire today, but at the time of the empire it was more considered the weight than of the pottery working. The wealth of a patrician was expressed by the weight of his pottery which was also widely used as "gift" during the Saturnalia or, as Simmachus did when his son was appointed questore, distributing it as a thanksgiving to his friends who had supported his election as magistrate.
The Symmachus gifts to his friends are similar to the Largitiones of emperors of the 4th and 5th centuries, or the gift of pottery in silver or gold that were made to senior officials or officers who in this way the emperor intended to gratify.
It was a very important gift not only for the intrinsic value of the metal but because being worked was an object that could be exposed and became a testimony of the favor enjoyed by the emperor.
The emperor's gifts were then proportionate to the importance of the recipient, both as regards the refinement of the workmanship but even before the weight itself that the object had to have; the imperial administration was very attentive to this aspect and the gift that could have been a vase or more often a dish had a weight proportional to one of the ingots: there were plates of equal weight than that of a pound ingot and plates of weight equal to 2 pounds and so on.
The bestowal plates were refined and rich objects of propaganda that the Emperor was gave to all his men in the four corners of the empire, and which were found in Gaul, as in Turkey and Illyria ...
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by M.L. ©ALL RIGHTS RESERVED (Ed 1.0 - 29/10/2019)