Traditionally, Italian, Russian, Indian and French metalwork masters made delicate lace like jewellery metalwork art pieces from 1660 to the late 19th century. In fact, filigree has become a special branch of jewellery in modern times. However, historically it was a part of the ordinary work of a jeweler.

The Louvre and in the British Museum preserved stunning filigree jewelry pieces of the Greek and Etruscan craftsmen of the 6th to the 3rd centuries. Italian and European silver from seventeen-twenty century is mostly silver artworks of precious and rare unique silver filigree works.
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Ancient jewelry art of Afghanistan

Tillya tepe means Golden Hill, an archaeological site in Afghanistan near Sheberghan, surveyed in 1979 by a Soviet-Afghan mission of archaeologists led by Victor Sarianidi. The hoard contained about 20,000 gold ornaments found in six graves (five women and one man) with extremely rich jewelry art pieces, dated to around the 1st century BC. Several thousand pieces of recovered fine jewelry were made of gold, turquoise, lapis-lazuli. The ornaments included coins, necklaces, belts, medallions and crowns.

Some of the finds are a part of the traveling exhibition titled “Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures From the National Museum, Kabul”, first displayed in 2006 in France’s Musee Guimet in Paris, in Washington, D.C. from May 25th to Sept. 7th, 2008; and from Oct. 24th, 2008 to Jan. 25th, 2009 the collection was at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.
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Russian jeweler Ivan Khlebnikov (1819 – 1881) worked in St. Petersburg until 1867, and in 1871 founded the company in Moscow. Khlebnikov’s Factory of diamond, gold and silver jewelry was well equipped with the latest technology for all kinds of work, its products were considered one of the best in Russia. The factory of Khlebnikov had a special art school, there were special workshops. Socioeconomic changes taking place in Russian life in the second half of XIX century could not but reflected the motifs of jewelry. There are stories on the theme of peasant life, which is displayed in a highly glamorized, and far from the truth. Made by small groups sculptures on the theme of peasant life, cast in silver, sometimes fortified on stone pedestals, served as ornaments for a desk or a table.
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