Granulation


 * This article is about a metal working technique. You may also be looking for the stone deterioration process, Granular disintegration.

Granulation is a process used by goldsmiths or silversmiths to decorate precious metals with small spheres fused to a base piece.

Decoration consists of minute globules of gold, soldered to form patterns on a metal surface. Its use is rare in Egypt. It occurs in Cyprus at an early period, as for instance on a gold pendant in the British Museum from Enkomi in Cyprus (10th century BC). The pendant is in the form of a pomegranate, and has upon it a pattern of triangles, formed by more than 3000 minute globules separately soldered on. It also occurs on ornaments of the 7th century BC from Camirus in Rhodes. But these globules are large, compared with those found on Etruscan jewelry. Fortunato Pio Castellani, who had made the antique jewelry of the Etruscans and Greeks his special study, with the intention of reproducing the ancient models, found it for a long time impossible to revive this particular process of delicate soldering. He overcame the difficulty at last, by the discovery of a traditional school of craftsmen at St Angelo in Vado, by whose help his well-known reproductions were executed.