History of Engraving

En­grav­ing is a cen­tur­ies old art form. Ori­gin­ally, people carved im­ages in­to stone and then gradu­ally star­ted ex­per­i­ment­ing with metals, soft and pli­able, as en­grav­ing sur­faces. As a mat­ter of fact, metal­work has co-evolved with en­grav­ing styles and tech­niques. Weapons and re­li­gious rel­ics as well as every­day ob­jects have been en­graved since civil­iz­a­tion learned how to smelt metals.

The very first en­grav­ings were scratched by a chisel onto cop­per weapons, jew­elry, and dishes. These im­ages de­pic­ted tri­bal life and so­ci­ety - its vic­tor­ies and de­feats, re­li­gious rituals, and oth­er sig­ni­fic­ant events. The earli­est known en­graved items be­long to the Sumeri­an civil­iz­a­tion and date to 5,000 B.C. These items in­cluded knives, dag­gers, ar­mors, jew­elry, and cups. The Sumeri­an artists also used ham­mer­ing, fili­gree, and sol­der­ing tech­niques to ad­orn the en­graved ar­ti­facts.

In An­cient Egypt, the most at­tract­ive and ex­quis­itely en­graved items were made of the sac­red Ra’s met­al – gold. Tomb ex­cav­a­tions re­vealed a great num­ber of bronze, gold, and sil­ver items covered with ex­tremely mas­ter­ful en­grav­ing. This find demon­strates that the Egyp­tians were skilled in ad­vanced me­tal­lur­gic­al tech­niques. Oth­er en­graved ar­ti­facts from this peri­od are also mag­ni­fi­cent. Dishes, jew­elry, and weapons made of cop­per, bronze, and sil­ver still im­press today's mas­ter en­gravers. The ori­gin­al artists pre­ferred flor­al or­na­ment­a­tion and re­li­gious mo­tifs, and they used mold­ing, enamel­ing, and notch­ing tech­niques.

Later, when people learned to smelt bronze and to ex­tract gold and sil­ver, spe­cial tools were de­signed to fa­cil­it­ate the en­grav­ing pro­cess. At first, en­grav­ings fea­tured simple im­agery like flowers, scrolls, and sym­bols. As the gold­smith and black­smith tools and tech­niques be­came more soph­ist­ic­ated, the ar­tis­ans de­veloped more com­plex en­grav­ings. These en­grav­ings were marked by more elab­or­ate and or­nate pat­terns that in­cor­por­ated scrolls, shields, fo­liage, and oth­er ele­ments. The en­grav­ings were em­bel­lished with in­lays, tex­tures, and black­en­ing that res­ul­ted in a rich­er, more in­tric­ate, clas­sic­al design.

Dur­ing the Middle Ages, the art of en­grav­ing rap­idly ma­tured and pro­gressed. Com­mem­or­ative in­scrip­tions and love let­ters en­graved on jew­elry were ex­tremely pop­u­lar. En­graved ar­mor, dishes, and monu­ments were also com­mon. Later, dur­ing the Baroque era, en­grav­ing was over­shad­owed by mold­ing and coin­ing, which were more fash­ion­able than en­grav­ing. Nev­er­the­less, en­grav­ing was still used for mak­ing com­mem­or­ative in­scrip­tions, quotes, and mono­grams. 

The end of 18th cen­tury wit­nessed the dawn of ma­chine en­grav­ing, which, at that time, re­placed hand­made en­grav­ing tech­niques. Re­gard­less of the ease of ma­chine en­grav­ing, only mas­ters of hand­made en­grav­ing were al­lowed to en­grave weapons. The Ger­man en­gravers were be­lieved to be the most skill­ful, and they pre­ferred us­ing spe­cial needles over the ma­chines. The en­grav­ing pro­cess was very me­tic­u­lous: first, the ob­ject was covered with cin­nabar; second, an im­age was scratched with tiny needles; and fi­nally, the im­age was etched on the ob­ject it­self. The res­ult was so amaz­ingly beau­ti­ful that it was clear that no ma­chine is cap­able of pro­du­cing such fine work.

Even though mod­ern ma­chines are now more soph­ist­ic­ated and able to pro­duce fine and el­eg­ant en­grav­ing, hand­made en­grav­ings re­main highly ap­pre­ci­ated throughout the world. All items made by Dmitriy Pavlov, fea­tured in our gal­lery, are unique and en­tirely hand­made with the finest en­grav­ing tools. Dmirtiy has per­fec­ted his own en­grav­ing tech­nique, which al­lows him to cre­ate the most elab­or­ate and unique designs.