A collection in context: the production of handmade hollow jewellery

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse a nineteenth-century collection of bronze moulds (about 1,500) still used in a goldsmiths workshop in Gondomar (a city near Porto in Portugal). The collection belonged to a workshop in Porto that closed in the 1970s and was in danger of disappearing. It was bought by the workshop in Gondomar, which began using it again from then on. These moulds are used in the stamping technique, a process of making a complete relief pattern on metal by hammering a punch with the desired pattern in relief into a metal sheet over a corresponding depressed mould. It is an ancient manual process and with it a number of identical objects can be made at the same time. It was highly developed in the nineteenth century to make mass-produced jewellery. The bronze moulds were used to create some of the most common types of Portuguese jewels during the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century, especially earrings and pendants, chiefly crosses, hearts and religious images. These large hollow jewels were used as objects of ostentation by middle-class people, farmers and fishermens wives, but also by aristocrats. Nowadays they can be seen being worn by women taking part in traditional festivities. The success of these celebrations contributes to the continuity and promotion of this type of jewellery. This study aims to reflect on the forms, types and production techniques, using photographs taken in the goldsmiths workshop in Gondomar, and also on the use of these jewels, which are seen in individual and group portraits made in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.