Articles - Techniques

Enamel jewelry means gold or silver jewelry decorated with enamel paints. These paints are fine crushed glass powders, which the enamellist "paints" over the surface of the piece. The piece is then fired for the powder to melt and harden to a smooth coating.

Netsuke is a miniature sculpture that was used by the Japanese in the past as a button to fasten a small case or holster to the kimono robe. Invented in the 17th Century, the Netsuke was carved mainly in ivory and wood by Japanese craftsmen. Every such "button" had a pair of holes in it for inserting the string along which the Netsuke could be moved.

Cameo is a method of carving of a raised relief image, done in two layers, with the bottom layer serving as a background to the relief. The common materials for making cameos are shells, which yield well to carving, and sardonyx agate, which is a hard stone. The inverted technique to cameo is intaglio, which involved incising or etching into the matrix.

Craquéle is a method of glazing ceramics which makes the glazure look cracked all over into small fragments. It gives the glazed item a convincing "antique" appearance.

The old Suzani is a fabric of colorful embroidery, traditionally made for hundreds of years throughout the central Asian countries, especially Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan. It has been used for decorating walls or spreading on the floor as a "tablecloth". The subjects, colors and threads of the Suzani embroidery are traditional, as is the fabric itself, usually a kind of linen, which is woven by hand.

Kilim is a carpet or rug made by hand, in a technique of tightly interweaving the warp and weft strands of the weave to produce a flat surface with no pile. It is produced in the near Eastern countries of Turkey, Iran, the Caucasus, and the Balkans. It was made of cotton or wool for indigenous, rather than commercial, use. Being flatly woven (unlike the Persian pile carpets), these rugs were less durable. They were mostly used as a decoration for walls and the floor, and also as prayer rugs, or sometimes for carrying heavy loads.

Gobelin is an embroidered tapestry of colorful scenes. The embroidery technique is a cross-shaped stitch on canvas, on which the desired scene is drawn. Antique Gobelins are richly detailed pictures of aristocratic and royal life, hunts, battle scenes, and sceneries.

Gobelin was the name of the French artist who developed the Gobelin technique in 16th Century France. In the 20th century some Gobelins made were modeled after famous paintings of Picasso and Marc Chagall.