In the finest steps the skillful worker receives the devotee which has been reduced to dust,.rubs it over a panoramic tilted plank pouring moisten over it all the time; then, the carnal problem in it, disolv.

Gold Artisans, Filigree Artists of Colombia

In the blessing steps the skillful labourer receives the peanut which has been reduced to dust,rubs it over a sweeping tilted plank pouring irrigate over it all the time; then, the secular dispute in it, disolved by the water, runs down the plank while the one that has the gold in it stays on the board due to its duty Repeating this a cipher of times, best he rubs it softly and pressing lightly with loose-texture sponges it takes away the porous and earthly dispute until all is left is real gold dust

When I proverb Aicardo Lpez working it was like no 2000 years own passed since Diodoro of Sicily, the Greek historian from the 1st century bC, described like this how the senile egipcians extracted gold from the bowels of the Earth Aicardos tools, a partner in his 50s with the tan and wrinkles of someone used to working under the sun, were so traditional like the egipcians: a genre of beaten wooden box, over it a strainer for the larger stones and the only testimonies we were in the 21st century were a construction labourer helmet that served as a wet bucket and a shovel There, at the Cauca river shore a few meters from the elderly Puente de Occidente, that minute figure aptitude down over his apparatus and rather imprisoned by the storm clouds and the mountains that covert the river canyon, was a faithful reminder of the indian tradition of paying tribute to their gods through gold

Of all Colombian indian gold tribes none settled this quota of the mid-Cauca river valley. Southward up the same valley the Quimbaya indians created their beautiful figurines by the gone wax process They molded their figurines in beeswax sunshade it with a layer of clay and putting all this in a kindle the wax melted out of the clay clog leaving the void massage inside ready to lavish in the tumbaga, a copper and gold alleation fair like its done nowadays, maybe obtaining the cave of one of the eminent poporos inspired in disposition North of the town of Santa Fe de Antioquia was the indian culture of Urab who molded further usual representations, specially animals with raised tails or two-headed birds However the prime openwork instructors, the art of creating figures with gold thread, in Santa Fe de Antioquia werent the indian gold artisans but family from Mompox where curiously gold was not mined but hoarded up in the era when the Spaniards stripped their colonies from all the gold they could collect Through juncture the Santa Fe citizens sensible openwork many times passed from procreation to engendering like Anibal Ramos tells it: I posses been doing this for around 18 years This is like hereditary. My friar taught me whom was taught by an uncle himself If any of my children has this flair then Ill teach him too

Filigree is an decrepit art and the greeks practiced already in the 5th century bC after working with granulation where tiny gold balls are coagulate up to sett juicy designs in relief

At the Jaime Benitez shop, one of the traditional last names of Santa Fe filigree, an artisan passes a gold obstruct some 2 inches desire through a tool with rollers twin to a spaghetti cutter The gold bar, one of the most malleable metals in the world, stretches and stretches unimaginably to the dot when it becomes a thick thread that the artisan then passes through ruby discs with different callibers until what was a paltry gold hinder is now a thread as bony as hair. Now the true art begins With this thread many things can be done Braided for example, it gives a beautiful relief Benitez, meanwhile, is working on a globe for a quinceaera. Life for the folks of Santa Fe is pronounced like a pendulum by their gold treasure The newborn receives a gold bracelet, then comes First Communion, fifteen years in the situation of girls, graduation, conjugal In Santa Fes old womens ears and hands are represented all the special days of their lives The traditional designs reign: the woven meagre ball, that is not empitic anywhere else, everything we do: the hardly rose, the hardly tomatoes, all that comes from antiquity Jaime Benitez explains.

And the venture is meticulous Gold grains as well as tiny gold thread rings are handled, and where two figures stroke each more a millimetric golden solder joins the parts Little by little, minute by minute, a ring gets its second knead Four hours of job stop a ball blackened by the solder flame. Still ahead is polishing and cleaning Its not easy undertaking Like Anibal Ramos vocal to me when I asked if he was ever to teach his kids the openwork art: This is a extremely ungrateful job, the artisan factory too hard and never gets from what to live

After working 6 hours digging and filtering, Aicardo Lopez got his day downfall and before the afternoon drizzle placed a oversight of paper with 3 grams of gold dust inside an El Rey matchbox. It was not a mildewed day for him; he commit procure 11.000 pesos (around six dollars) for that quantity It didnt dispute to him that the later day that gold would become a handmade lace stone whose value for the hotelier cede be more than dual what it paid for it

Gold Artisans

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