The History of Handmade Copper Jewelry 
 

Copper Reflections artisans have been making handmade copper jewelry pieces unique to them by creating their own original designs and techniques. Handmade jewelry and gifts are created from copper using a wide range of designs from wildlife, nature, Native American, western and animal designs. These unique jewelry handcrafted by using black inks, silver solutions, engraving, and diamond cutting. Each of these outstanding jewelry creations has beautiful earth tones black, silver and copper.

 

The jewelry making technique that these talented artisans use dates back hundreds of years. The history of Copper Arts goes back centuries. Copper was used because of the softness that made it easier to shape. In the old days, copper was shaped through hammering or spinning on a lathe by hand into functional shapes like weapons and tools, art objects and decorative ornaments, vases, bowls, and water jugs. Copper was used as water jugs because it kept water cooler and fresher in the hot summer days.

Copper was the first metal mined and crafted by man and has been the most important metal through history. It was available in great volumes and easily mined at the surface of the earth. Archaeological excavations proved that copper crafting was known in Eastern Turkey, Persians and by Sumerians, since the beginning of a Neolithic era.

 

Copper working had reached high practical levels in Mesopotamia and Egypt at the end of the fourth-century B.C.Copper reached the Mediterranean coasts and to the West reaching through Anatolia all the way to Troy on the Aegean Sea. During the third century B.C., Troy became very important in copper art history, as copper craftsmen, merchants, and traders established Troy as a commercial center. From Troy, technical knowledge and the materials for copper working reached the Aegean islands all the way to Spain. After 2000 B.C. copper crafting was widely used throughout Europe.

The discovery of the process needed to obtain copper from its ores was a very important event in history and gave birth to copper crafting. The first copper works were made by cutting, curving and hammering with a stone hammer. The old blacksmiths made an important discovery that copper hardens under prolonged hammering, but can be brought back to its initial condition of softness by heating (annealing) without changing the shape. Many ancient objects were handcrafted through alternate cycles of hammering and annealing, with a final hammering to obtain the necessary hardness.

In ancient times, copper art objects were made by the Coppersmiths used raw copper to create with various techniques. For example, the simplest way to obtain a copper bowl consisted in hammering a copper disc placed on a hollowed wooden block. This is the most ancient method to handcraft bowls, dating back to Babylon.

Another technique was known as raising which became very popular to obtain an hammered copper jewelry. Copper was brilliantly utilized by the artists of the classical age, and then in the Middle Ages, and in the masterpieces of Renaissance and Baroque. Copper continued to be used mainly for household objects.

Working techniques remained almost unchanged over the centuries, while the shapes were continuously improved to fit with the evolution of the lifestyle. Its properties, discovered and appreciated by our ancient ancestors, are still valid today. Copper jewelry worn directly on skin has been used as a remedy for many ailments, including arthritis. Copper bracelets ease joint and arthritis. Copper jewelry has been considered as a "Fountain of Youth" for its ability to improve the elastic fiber in skin, increase skin flexibility, and act as an anti-wrinkle treatment.