🖋️ Engraving Conversations – Episode 2
Tools of eternity – engraving with feeling
When you look at a niello work, you see fine lines, shiny silver, artistic contrasts.
But what you don't see: the tool that creates all this. And the hand that guides it.
Niello isn't a technique that can be accomplished with machines. It's a silent conversation between hand and metal—conducted with instruments that are themselves small masterpieces.
The tools of engraving
🖋️ Engraving stylus
Perhaps the most poetic chisel in the world. Made of hardened steel, often handcrafted—like an extension of the artist's finger.
🔨 Engraving hammer
Small, heavy, precise. The sound of a hammer blow on a chisel is like a silver typesetting—rhythmic, quiet, and meaningful.
✒️ Punches & ruler compasses
This creates precise ornaments. Not a digital grid, but a sense of space and symmetry.
🕯️ Light and peace
Not a tool—yet irreplaceable. Engraving requires atmosphere. Shadows, focus, a state between concentration and meditation.
Why the tool is more than just a means
In every line lies not only power – but history.
A burin can remain in use for decades, becoming a little more polished with each engraving.
He remembers his master's wrist, the pressure, the rhythm, the temperament.
He is not a tool. He is a witness.
Nielloa means handcraft
That's why our engravings never look identical.
Because no two artists engrave like each other.
And because we don’t want them to be just products – but personal signatures in silver .
A little verse to take away
A chisel is silent,
and yet tells –
of hands, time
and quiet world.
Episode 3 will focus on the material itself : Why silver? Why black? Why exactly this way?
→ Ready?