Mexican Handcrafts :: Icons

Mexican Metal Embossed Art

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Working with metals is a cultural ancient tradition, from remote times beautiful pieces were worked in this material, but it is in the Middle Ages when a high artistic level and an esthetic maturity were reached.

The work in relief on plates of metal (aluminum, tin, gold, silver, etc.) or embossment is a technique that comes from Europe and that originates from sacred imagery, painted on tablets. From the XII century the embossment began to gain importance because of these imagery (icons) which were sold to the devotees, but due to the environmental conditions of the places where these were placed the paintings eventually lost their brilliance and shade. As a result of this artists began to cover them with metals to protect them from the contact with the environment and the people.

After being used this form of art by several centuries it was abandoned, but at the beginning of the XX century it was retaken starting in Europe, with its height in France, where it became an industrial activity, which was not limited only to the icons, the technique expanded to other decorative objects and of common use like marks, trays and lamps. Lamentably the embossed work begun to lose the interest to work in, until recently in Mexico and Spain it has resurged.