Etruscan gold fibula
A dress fastener covered in gold grains so tiny that the technique was forgotten for two thousand years.
Etruscan granulation impressed 19th-century goldsmiths, who tried to recreate it. Fibulae like this lay in princely tombs at Cerveteri and Vulci. Examples are in the Museo Gregoriano Etrusco in the Vatican and the British Museum.
Materials: Gold
Manufacture: Granulation: thousands of gold spheres smaller than grains of sand fused on without visible solder.
The surface of minute gold grains forming animals and patterns.
Lions and sphinxes in rows – the Orientalising style.