A Little Bit About Reticulation

You may have noticed pretty much all of my work features an unusual texture.  This texture is called reticulation. The short explanation is that reticulation is a heat texture done with a torch on silver or gold - but it takes a deft hand on the torch to get the desired results.  Reticulation produces a ridged or ripply surface through controlled heating.

A finished reticulated piece of silver with a high polish.

Reticulation usually involves heating a sheet of gold or silver alloy up to 10 times to oxidize the copper at the surface, then pickling to remove the oxide and leaving a thin layer of pure metal. This process-called depletion gilding-results in different melting temperatures between the surface and the interior of the sheet. Once the sheet is gilded, it is heated with a torch: The alloy in the interior flows before the surface metal does. The result is that the surface wrinkles, something like the "skin" on hot chocolate-only more appetizing.

Click on any of the images below to make them larger:

The dark pieces of silver in the background have already been depletion guild-ed and are cooling before being cleaned.

You can see the texture on the metal starting to take shape as it is heated evenly.

The piece in the foreground is being reticulated using a medium large torch tip.

It's important to keep the torch moving constantly so as not to burn a hole in the metal, or even melt it entirely.