As jewelers or purchasers of jewelry, we should familiarize ourselves as much as possible with the techniques used in creating the beautiful jewelry pieces we sell in order to pass the essence of the pieces on to our customers. Bali silversmiths have a very special talent in creating items that are attractive both in looks and in concept. In creating their masterpieces of jewelry, the Bali silversmith uses techniques of granulation which are the application of tiny dots, scrolls and lines to the surface of their jewelry to decorate the pieces.

Granulated Bali Ring

Bali silversmiths make molds into which they pour molten silver or gold to create the base shape of the jewelry piece. Once the foundation piece cools, they then decorate it with the tiny spheres via granulation. One of the secrets in determining whether a piece of Bali jewelry is authentic is to examine it closely to determine if the decorations appear to be part of the molding process or whether they are rough appearing to have been fused or soldered once the piece has cooled. If the dots or lines on a piece of jewelry bleed into one another, it’s likely that the silver was poured into a mold that had indentations for the surface design.

Granulation, the technique used by the Bali silversmiths, is an ancient jewelry technique where the surface of a piece of jewelry is decorated with small spheres of the same precious metal arranged in a pattern making the piece unique and attactive. Metal alloys above 18 karat gold and sterling silver are best for applying the technique.

At the simplistic level, granulation is the application of one of three techniques to adhere small spheres of precious metal to the piece’s surface. These three techniques are hard soldering, fusing and colloidal soldering. When solder is used, it tends to fill in the corners and fuse the finer details of the design. For this reason, we will discuss only the fusion technique. In the finest jewelry created through granulation, fusion, the tiny spheres are attached to the surface of the piece only at small contact point where the surfaces are fused making them appear to float on the surface of the piece like tiny balls on a smooth surface.

The process begins with the creation of the tiny spheres to be utilized in decorating the piece’s surface. The spheres consist of metal that is the same as that of the piece to which it will be fused. To create these tiny spheres, a sheet of metal is rolled out very thin and cut into tiny 1 mm square pieces. Another way is to cut 18 gauge wire into 1mm segments. These tiny square pieces or wire segments are coated with charcoal powder. Then the bottom of the melting crucible is covered with a layer of charcoal and some of the small squares or wire segments are sprinkled on it evenly spaced. Additional layers of charcoal and squares or wire segments are added until the crucible is about 75% full. The crucible is then fired in a kiln or oven causing the tiny squares to form small spheres. Once fired, these are cooled. Bali Rhodolite Garnet Ring This process is repeated until enough small spheres have been created. The spheres are then sorted by size using a diamond sieve with the smallest holes possible for application to the jewelry piece.

Creating the design on the surface of the piece of jewelry requires great skill and experience. Of the three techniques for fusing the spheres to the surface of the piece of jewelry of the same alloy, Bali silversmiths are skilled in fusing the spheres directly to the surface. In fusing, a sheet of metal with about the same thickness as the diameter of the tiny spheres is utilized to get the most even heat distribution. The granules are positioned into the design pattern using a diluted flux and a fine paint brush. Once in place the entire piece is fired using an oven with reducing atmosphere at the precise point of the melting temperature so the spheres and the surface of the piece of jewelry fuse together. The stunning appearance of fine granulation is a result of the tiny spheres fused to the surface of the main jewelry piece finely at the tangent point between the base metal and the tiny sphere.