| Pre-Columbian |
The general term for jewellery and ornaments in gold made in South America, chiefly in what are now Colombia and Peru, before Columbus discovered the Americas. Until the ninteenth century the gold objects that pre-dated the Spanish conquest were usually attributed to the Incas themselves, but it is now known that the goldsmith’s art reached a high level much earlier. The first great Peruvian civilization of Chavin around 1200 BC was already making gold ornaments by hammering fine sheets of metal and decorating them by embossing. The Nazca people developed the technique of casting gold in the deserts of southern Peru before AD 500.
The apogee of technical skills came during the Chimu Empire between AD 1150 and 1450, when goldsmiths perfected lost wax casting, alloys, welding and plating. They learned how to do filigree by rolling gold under tension into fine wires.
Gold burial mask of the Chimu
Empire, when magnificent work was
created by craftsmen of high technical accomplishment
(Credit: World Gold Council)
Plating was done with an alloy of thirty per cent gold, seventy per cent copper. After being poured onto an ornament, this alloy was treated with acids extracted from plant juices producing a copper oxide which could be cleaned off, leaving the surface covered with a thin film of pure gold. Wonderful replicas of animals, birds and plants (golden corn in a sheaf of silver leaves) were made. When the Incas conquered the Chimu, they still employed their best goldsmiths, for the craft was highly esteemed; gold was ‘the sweat of the sun’ (and silver ‘the tears of the moon’). This tradition, however, was shattered by the Spanish invasion of South America and Pizarro’s capture and ransom of the Inca. An estimated eight tonnes of Pre-Columbian ornaments were melted down to pay it, and a tradition of craftsmanship built up over 2,500 years destroyed. The best collection of surviving Pre-Columbian gold is in the Museo del Oro in Bogota, Colombia.