Cannetille and Filigree: Making Gold Look Like Lace
When gold was scarce after the Napoleonic wars, goldsmiths made a virtue of using almost none: coils, spirals and rosettes of fine wire that filled a large space with a small weight. The result is the most fragile and most beautiful jewelry of the 1820s.
Filigree is the general craft: fine wire, plain or twisted, bent and soldered into openwork patterns. Cannetille is a specific and short-lived version of it, fashionable roughly from 1810 to 1840, in which tightly coiled wire, rosettes, beehive spirals and burr-like clusters are built up into a dense, three-dimensional structure around a coloured stone. Filigree is lace; cannetille is architecture. Both exist for the same practical reason: they fill volume with almost no metal, which mattered enormously in a period when gold was expensive and scarce.
How the work is made
Wire is drawn down to the required gauge, then annealed so it can be worked. For filigree, it is bent into scrolls and shapes and soldered edge to edge, often within a frame that carries the structural load. For cannetille, the wire is coiled around a former to make spirals and cones, and these units are assembled into a lattice, frequently with granulation or tiny beads added at the junctions. The soldering is the difficult part: too much heat collapses the whole structure, and every joint is a place where the piece can later fail.
The stones set into cannetille are characteristic of the period and of the intention to look expensive without being so: pink topaz, citrine, aquamarine, amethyst, chrysoberyl, garnet and turquoise, usually in closed and often foiled settings. The foiled stone rules apply, which is to say that water is the enemy.
Dating
| Feature | Indication |
|---|---|
| Dense coiled cannetille around a large coloured stone | Georgian into early Victorian, roughly 1810 to 1840 |
| Flat openwork filigree in silver, often with marcasite | Later, and produced continuously into the twentieth century |
| Filigree in silver with turquoise or coral, from southern Europe | Nineteenth century tourist and folk production, made for a long period |
| Machine-made stamped openwork imitating filigree | Late nineteenth century onwards; look for identical repeats |
| Very light gold with a hollow reverse | Consistent with the period's economy of metal |
Cannetille proper is a narrow window and therefore useful for dating a whole piece, as covered in the dating guide. Filigree in general is not, because it never stopped being made.
Condition, which decides everything
This is the most fragile construction in antique jewelry, and its condition should be assessed before its beauty.
Look for crushed or flattened sections, since a light knock deforms coils permanently and reshaping usually cracks the solder. Look for missing units, a rosette or spiral gone from a repeating pattern, which is very hard to replace convincingly. Look for later solder, visible as a different colour or a blob where a neat joint should be, and for lead solder, which is a serious fault because it cannot be cleanly removed and damages the gold around it. Check closed backs for water staining, which means the foil behind the stone has gone and the colour with it.
Repair is specialist work and expensive relative to the value of most pieces, so buy condition rather than plan to fix it.
Care
No ultrasonic cleaner, ever, since the vibration works the joints loose. No soaking, because of the closed settings. A soft brush used lightly and dry, and storage flat in a box where nothing can press on the structure. If a piece must be cleaned, it should be by someone who has seen the construction fail before.
Frequently asked questions
What is cannetille?
A goldsmithing technique of roughly 1810 to 1840 in which tightly coiled fine wire, rosettes and spirals are built into a three-dimensional openwork structure, usually around a large coloured stone.
How is cannetille different from filigree?
Filigree is the general craft of soldering fine wire into openwork; cannetille is a specific dense, sculptural version of it belonging to a narrow period.
Why was so little gold used?
Gold was scarce and expensive after the Napoleonic wars. Wirework filled a large visual space with very little metal, which is why the technique flourished then.
Which stones are typical?
Pink topaz, citrine, aquamarine, amethyst, chrysoberyl, garnet and turquoise, generally in closed, often foiled settings.
Can damaged filigree be repaired?
Only by a specialist, and rarely invisibly. Reshaping crushed coils tends to crack old solder joints, so condition should be bought rather than fixed.
How should I clean it?
Dry and gently, with a soft brush. Never use an ultrasonic cleaner, which loosens the soldered joints, and never soak a piece with closed or foiled settings.