When a piece of niello has finished the smelting process of blackening, it is not yet beautiful. It is a black, rough form with niello residue in places where it doesn't belong. The entire elegance that the finished piece will later possess—the mirror-like shine, the contrast with the black, the light running along a curve—only comes through polishing. Four stages, each important.
Stage 1 — the rough grind
The process begins with sanding belt grinding. In the picture, you can see how a master holds a silver pot over a running sanding belt. The belt removes coarse niello residue, oxide layers, and tool marks. Afterwards, the pot looks milky — no reflection, no brilliance, but a uniform surface.
Stage 2 — the rotating polishing wheel
From the sanding belt, the piece goes to the rotating polishing wheel, which is coated with a fine polishing paste. Here, the shine returns stage by stage — milky becomes matte, matte becomes silky, silky becomes shiny, and shiny becomes a mirror. An experienced polisher works on the piece using movements suited to the shape — different for a sphere than for a handle or a flat tray.
Stage 3 — the Opilovka
During the Opilovka, the master craftswomen remove the last excess niello residues around the V-grooves. A rule applies here that demands a lot of patience: the movements must be strictly circular, never transverse. Why? Because otherwise the niello crust scratches the silver — if the grinding movements were to go criss-cross, loosened niello particles would be dragged into the silver as fine scratches.
Stage 4 — the final polish, sometimes by candlelight
The last picture is perhaps the most atmospheric. A polisher works on a small silver piece with fine sandpaper — by candlelight. What happens here is the final manual work on the surface before the piece leaves the polishing workshop: in the soft, side-falling light, every small unevenness is revealed, and the polisher works it by hand with fine paper. Afterwards, quality control checks that the surface is perfect.
Étagère from the Tsar’s Feast collection — detail of the polished interior mirror with floral niello edge and gold-plated pearl scroll. View piece →
Selective — the trick with matte niello
Polishing does not happen the same way everywhere. The master craftswomen polish the silver to a mirror shine — but not the niello interior of the ornament. There, they consciously leave the matte depth intact. It is precisely this contrast between the mirror shine and the matte black that makes the finished niello piece so unmistakable.
So, when you eventually look at a SevChern piece and see how sharply the black line stands out against the bare silver — that is not just niello. That is also what was not polished.
→ Secret 5 — Completion with polish and gold · Secret 10 — the OTK inspection