Techniques

The jewels are made by hand working on the “banchetto”, a small wooden table that has remained unchanged over the centuries. Even the main tools are the same as in the past: small hammers of various shapes, the jeweler’s sawframe, the burin, the chisel, the rolling mill, the dies, the files etc. The work begins with the melting of precious metals in the crucible to obtain the starting alloys and ingots, from these are produced the sheets, the wires and the granules that are processed, welded and assembled together. The jewel thus created can be enriched with gems, enamels, engravings etc. A very refined technique is the Etruscan one, which uses very thin threads and microscopic granules in 22 Kt joined by micro-welding invisible to the naked eye based on copper salts. Aliseda has developed this system over the years based on ancient texts and the study of original jewels preserved in major European museums. Another ancient processing system is lost wax casting, in this case the jewel is made in wax and turned into precious metal thanks to a series of firings and fusions.