Description

Square box in 925/1000 sterling silver gold plated with translucent fired enamels on sunburst guilloche and fine hand engravings. External frame with engraved and enameled border in Louis XVI Empire style. Measures 10.5 x 10.5 cm. 2.8 cm. high. Weight gr. 562- Designed by Franco Salimbeni in 1979 and produced in Florence at the Salimbeni firm’s headquarters by hand by skilled craftsmen with a thick slab and large reinforcements suitable for sustaining numerous enamelling firings at about 800° C. Guilloché is a craftsmanship performed on mostly precious metals, which allows to obtain surfaces engraved with complex and repeated geometric patterns. Guilloché engraving was invented in the mid-1800s in Switzerland by watch manufacturers to embellish the dials of their luxurious artifacts. The technique consists in engraving the metal with a burin using a machine with mostly manual controls. (see photos in the gallery) A copier following the sinuosity of some matrices placed on the machine transmits a movement to the object subjected to engraving, thus obtaining that the burin “cuts” the metal. By moving the positions of the matrices and the copier, precise intertwined engravings of an almost infinite geometric type are obtained and their continuous differentiation certainly adds value to the objects that are produced. The dexterity required to carry out this operation is highly specialized, the existing machines are very old, as there has never been a mass market and above all for the conservation of art. After the engraving, we generally proceed with fire enamelling, a meticulous and very long process during which the guilloché engraved surface is covered with various layers of colored glass powder and cooked in small special ovens at a temperature between 700 and 800 ° C. The result of transparency and perfection can also require numerous firings, at least 10 for a single color, for surfaces with multiple colors, it can even reach 50 firings. One color is applied at a time and then baked, the glazes used have a different blend so that when the next color is placed the previous one does not move. The inclination of the surfaces of an object can create great difficulties both for the guilloche engraving and in the enamel firing phase as the positioning of the machine becomes more complex and a great skill and competence is required while the liquefaction of the enamel produces situations complexes that only the highest level of craftsmanship can achieve. In Salimbeni production, guilloché engraving and enamelling have been the main processes for more than a century and are found in almost all products. In the construction of an object Salimbeni starts from a drawing, which can also be provided by the customer, to build the structure by hand with silver plates of different thicknesses. Once the necessary shape has been obtained with welding and finishing, processes common to the talented silversmiths, we proceed with the guilloché engraving and subsequent enamelling, as well as all the final polishing and galvanic finishing, for gilding and / or other. Our most complex and most precious productions also required months of work for small objects, seeking a perfection that is generally not contemplated in craftsmanship but which for us is the basis of our daily life.