Filigrana ampezzana / filigrana di Cortina (Italian)
Fine filigree in pure silver and sometimes gold, made in Cortina d'Ampezzo from the 18th century and at its finest in the 1890s. Its signature is the alpine flower rendered in wire: edelweiss, daisies, gentians and auriculas hung from the long pins that held Ampezzan women's coiled braids (unmarried women wore one pin, married women as many as they liked), shawl brooches with flowers and currant sprigs, and later frames, boxes and table pieces sold to the valley's early tourists. Wire was drawn through steel plates and then through some thirty pierced rubies and sapphires down to a tenth of a millimeter, two wires were twisted on a six-meter inclined bench at about four turns per millimeter, and the cord was rolled flat to catch the light as a beaded line. A filigree school opened in 1875 under the Austrian administration and marked its work 'SFC'; its most ambitious piece, 'Il Trionfo', a Gothic-style fountain 70 cm high bearing every flower of the valley in gold and silver filigree, disappeared unsold around 1890, and the school closed by 1899. One workshop survived until the 1930s.
Risk level: Critically Endangered · Not inscribed
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