Sterling silver pendant with Roman coin reproduction in oxidized silver

How it is made

The words of the trade, one by one, explained to those who do not know them.

01

Reproduced Roman coin

The coin is not ancient: it is a reproduction of a Roman coin, made in bronze or in silver depending on the piece. What is reproduced is a low relief — a head in profile, a few letters around the edge — and in a low relief a tenth of a millimeter is the whole difference between a profile you can read and a smudge. The blank that comes out is not a flat disc: it is higher at the center than at the edge, and the edge itself is not an exact circle. This is what decides the mounting. The frame closes on the edge, where the metal is steadier and where there is no design to cover, and it is tightened cold — a flame passed over the field of the coin would flatten the very relief it is being mounted for, and a crushed relief does not rise again.

02

Oxidizing

The silver is darkened on purpose, and then brought back to polish only where the light has to return. The black stays in the voids and the recesses, the bright on the raised work: it is a design made by subtraction, and whoever does it decides where to stop the cloth.

03

Hammered frame

The frame is beaten with the hammer once it has already been shaped, and every blow leaves a crooked facet that catches the light on its own account. There is no design to follow: you keep the rhythm and stop before the edge grows thin, because beaten metal spreads and gives way exactly where it has been struck most often. That is why no two frames ever come out identical, and why the last blow is decided by looking, not by counting.