Coppersmith
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A coppersmith (boiler maker) is a craftsman who mainly makes copper vessels for kitchen use, for factories, etc. and covers roofs with copper sheet . In contrast to iron-processing blacksmiths, he processes his material cold. Heat is only used for annealing.
Where there were copper mills , the coppersmiths formed a guild with the hammer mills and, in contrast to these, were called workshops. The trade is one of the oldest crafts and is already mentioned by the ancient Egyptians and in the Bible.
Coppersmithing in the narrower sense, i. H. The driving of unalloyed copper into vessels, weapons, reliefs , figures and statues was already practiced by the Assyrians , later to a greater degree by the Greeks . In Rome , the coppersmiths were among the oldest guilds that went up into the royal era. However, pure copper was soon replaced by alloys in general use.
In the Middle Ages , chalices , cibories , peristeria , lecture, altar and reliquary crosses , host boxes , reliquary containers in the form of heads, busts, hands, feet, etc., relief figures were used to decorate supporting altars, tabernacles , monstrances , eastern sensoriums , curvatures for bishops and others Devices and objects for ecclesiastical use made of strong copper sheet, which was mostly gilded.
The copper was also driven (hammered) over wooden cores that had been given the intended shape. Copper played an important role in the technique of mine smelting . The visible copper parts of enamelled devices were also gilded. The Renaissance favored ore casting and fine blacksmithing , which pushed coppersmithing into the background and limited it to the manufacture of vessels and implements for civil use.
The coppersmiths in the medieval Belgian town of Dinant enjoyed a special reputation, who hammered not only common objects, but also figures, candlesticks , candelabra , choir stands for churches and the like from sheet copper and brass . At the end of the 17th century, in order to avoid the expensive bronze casting , the idea of making colossal statues from copper plates that were knocked over a wooden model and then riveted came about. The 10 m high Hercules on Wilhelmshöhe near Kassel (made in 1717 by O. Ph. Küper) is an example of this branch of coppersmithing, which was later revived and perfected by G. Howaldt .
The revival of the art technique of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance has given coppersmithing higher tasks again, as washing and cooling vessels , vases , curtains and the like are embossed in copper and richly ornamented . In southern countries, copper is also used for heating pans , just as copper retained its old meaning in the Orient .
In India , Persia and the Danube countries, vessels are still driven into copper and tinned to prevent the copper from oxidizing . On the outside, the vessels (jugs, bowls, basins, bowls, lamps and the like) are decorated with engravings so that the copper-colored background forms an effective contrast to the light gray coating. Copper plays an equally important role in the East Asian enamel work. For statues, candlesticks, temple implements, gongs, mirrors and the like, an alloy is used in China, Japan and rear India, the main component of which is copper.
See also
literature
- Michel Buck: The free craft of the Kessler in Upper Swabia . Wagner, Ulm 1872 ( digitized Commons )
- Friedrich Hornschuch: Structure and history of the interterritorial Kessler circles in Germany . In: Quarterly for social and economic history . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1930 (Supplement No. 17)
