Morisco silver work with wire (sixteenth century)

Abstract

The article discusses twenty tests performed by Valencian artisans to become masters of ―wire work‖ between the years 1508 and 1538. Considered minor works in the area  of silver smithery, these pieces of jewellery  are characterized by  superimposed wire decoration. A peculiarity  of these tests was that  the pieces were not drawn on paper (the common practice for record-keeping purposes), but rather blackened and then stamped on- to paper. As a result, life-size and dated imprints have been preserved. as have the names of the artisans. They  were silver workers whose biographies are known, all of them Christian; many  of them worked in the Tossal district  of Valencia, next  to the M uslim quarter. Six square  metal  plates have an epigraphic band with Arabic letters, which explains why these pieces were also called ―Morisco things‖. With the help of the imprints and archaeo- logical parallels, this article tries to determine what kind of jewellery they were. The deco- rative and typological similarity  between some of these pieces and the M orisco jewellery found in the Alpujarra region, dating from the second half of the sixteenth century, suggest that the latter also may be the work of Christian metal workers.