Niello is a black mixture, usually of sulphur, copper, silver, and lead, used as an inlay on engraved or etched metal, especially silver. It is added as a powder or paste, then fired until it melts or at least softens, and flows or is pushed into engraved lines in the metal. It hardens and blackens when cool, and the niello on the flat surface is polished off to show the filled lines in black, contrasting with the polished metal around it. It may also be used with other metalworking techniques to cover larger areas, as seen in the sky in the diptych illustrated here. The metal where niello is to be placed is often roughened to provide a key. In many cases, especially in objects that have been buried underground, where the niello is now lost, the roughened surface indicates that it was once there. Niello was used on a variety of objects including sword hilts, chalices, plates, horns, adornment for horses, jewellery such as bracelets, rings, pendants, and small fittings such as strap-ends, purse-bars, buttons, belt buckles and the like. It was also used to fill in the letters in inscriptions engraved on metal. Periods when engraving filled in with niello has been used to make full images with figures have been relatively few, but the practice has produced some significant achievements. In ornament, niello came to have competition from enamel, with far wider colour possibilities, which eventually displaced it in most of Europe. The name derives (via Italian niello) from Latin nigellum, meaning "blackish (substance)". Though historically most common in Europe, niello has also been produced in many parts of Asia and the Near East.
History
Bronze Age
There are a number of claimed uses of niello from the Mediterranean Bronze Age, all of which have been the subjects of disputes as to the actual composition of the materials used, that have not been conclusively settled, despite some decades of debate. The earliest claimed use of niello appears in late Bronze Age Byblos in Syria, around 1800 BC, in inscriptions in hieroglyphs on scimitars. In Ancient Egypt it appears a little later, in the tomb of Queen Ahhotep II, who lived about 1550 BC, on a dagger decorated with a lion chasing a calf in a rocky landscape in a style that shows Greek influence, or at least similarity to the roughly contemporary daggers from Mycenae, and perhaps other objects in the tomb. At about the same time of c.1550 BC it appears on several bronze daggers from shaft grave royal tombs at Mycenae (in Grave Circle A and Grave Circle B), especially in long thin scenes running along the centre of the blade. These show the violence typical of the art of Mycenaean Greece, as well as a sophistication in both technique and figurative imagery that is startlingly original in a Greek context. There are a number of scenes of lions hunting and being hunted, attacking men and being attacked; most are now in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens. These are in a mixed-media technique often called metalmalerei (German: "painting in metal"), which involves using gold and silver inlays or applied foils with black niello and the bronze, which would originally have been brightly polished. As well as providing a black colour, the niello was also used as the adhesive to hold the thin gold and silver foils in place. Byblos in Syria, where niello first appears, was something of an Egyptian outpost on the Levant, and many scholars think that it was highly-skilled metalworkers from Syria who introduced the technique to both Egypt and Mycenaean Greece. The iconography can most easily be explained by some combination of influence from the broader traditions of Mesopotamian art where somewhat comparable imagery had been produced for over a thousand years in cylinder seals and the like, and some (such as the physique of the figures) from Minoan art, although no early niello has been found on Crete. A decorated metal cup, the "Enkomi Cup" from Cyprus has also been claimed to use niello decoration. However, controversy has continued since the 1960s as to whether the material used on all these pieces actually is niello, and a succession of increasingly sophisticated scientific tests have failed to provide evidence of the presence of the sulphurous compounds which define niello. It has been suggested that these artefacts, or at least the daggers, use in fact a technique of patinated metal that may be the same as the Corinthian bronze known from ancient literature, and is similar to the Japanese Shakudō.
Persia
The Sassanid Persians enjoyed dining and drinking together, a social event that is visible through ceramic, glass, and silver vessels. Elite circles handled silver cups, plates, and bowls on which artisans hammered and chased intricate designs. Sasanian niello is a decorative technique used in metalworking during the Sasanian Empire (224-651 AD). This technique was particularly popular in Sasanian silverwork, adorning objects such as plates, bowls, ewers, and jewelry. The designs often featured scenes of hunting, courtly life, animals, and mythical creatures. Sasanian niello is notable for its fine craftsmanship and the skillful use of negative space to create detailed imagery. But in general, Niello was rarely used in Sasanian metalwork, which could use it inventively. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has Sasanian shallow bowls or dishes where in one case it forms the stripes on a tiger, and in another the horns and hoofs of goats in relief, as well as parts of the king's weapons. This relief use of niello seems to be paralleled from this period in only one piece of Byzantine silver. A silver oval bowl decorated with tigers and grapevines, attributed to the Sasanian period of Iran (3rd-7th centuries CE) and held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art, was examined using non-invasive analytical techniques to identify the composition of the silver alloy and the niello inlay used in its decoration. The study revealed that the bowl is made of a silver-copper alloy containing approximately 3 wt.% copper. The niello inlays were found to consist solely of silver sulfide (acanthite). This composition closely resembles that of early Roman niello inlays, suggesting a possible technological link between Roman and Sasanian metalworkers during this period.
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