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Updated: June 29, 2025
Niello, with which the chalice of Theophilus is also to be enriched, stands in relation to the more beautiful art of enamel, as drawing does to painting, and it is well to consider it here. Both the Romans and the Anglo-Saxons understood its use. It has been employed as an art ever since the sixth and seventh centuries. Niello is more than simply a drawing on metal.
It is probably only a legendary narrative, but it is always told as one of the apocryphal stories when the origin of printing is discussed, and may not be out of place here. Maso Finiguerra, a Florentine, had just engraved the plate for his famous niello, a Pax which is now to be seen in the Bargello, and had filled it in with the fluid enamel, which was standing waiting until it should be dry.
The next day Hamlet brought her, as peace-offering, a slender gold flask curiously wrought in niello, which he had had filled with a costly odor at an apothecary's as he came along. "I never saw so lean a thing as that same culler of simples," said Hamlet, laughing; "a matter of ribs and shanks, a mere skeleton painted black. It is a rare essence, though.
As he peered into space to the right and left, he was aware of a gigantic panoply on each side at a vast height, resting on blocks of darkness, and consisting of a colossal shield riddled with holes, hanging above five broader swords, without hilts, but damascened on their flat blades with indefinite designs of bewildering niello.
The especial branch of goldsmithing which he practised was what the Italians still call 'niello' work, or the enamelling of designs upon precious metals. The method of doing such work is this. Upon the piece to be enamelled the design is first carefully drawn with a fine point, precisely as in silver chiselling, and corrected till quite perfect in all respects.
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