High-relief coinage in the Kazan-Tatar jewelry tradition: historical and technical analysis

Abstract

The article is devoted to identifying the origins and regional features of the technology of high-relief coinage in the Kazan-Tatar jewelry tradition. The main source was the electronic database of Tatar jewelry from museum collections, collected within the framework of the academic project “Jewelry of the Turkic peoples of Eurasia: general and special” (Russian Foundation for Basic Research 2013–2014, No. 13-06-97056). The research was based on a systematic technical and stylistic analysis of traditional jewelry and a detailed synchronous-diachronic examination of Bulgar-Golden Horde and Tatar products with three-dimensional images. Reconstruction of technological techniques related to this type of artistic metal processing made it possible to identify specific features of the formation of decor. The manual method of obtaining a unique relief using punches with a figured striker predominated. The decorations are characterized by the following: two or three-level bas-relief, the absence of a “locking” profile, the principle of “compositing” that underlies the conventionally interpreted floral and plant motifs, geometric orderliness, subject to the laws of the central-radial composition. The completed form of the decoration corresponds to the typical features of “notch chasing”, which is a marker of the Tatar craft tradition: smooth relief and “grain” background. An integrated approach allowed us to conclude that the origins of the existing artistic and figurative system can be traced in artifacts of the Bulgarian and Golden Horde silver of the 11th–14th centuries, made by embossing, stamping, and punching on a matrix. The formation of technological features was influenced by the traditions of high-relief coinage, which received regional development among Kazan silversmiths in the 17th–18th centuries. The specifics of Tatar relief coinage as a whole were formed in the context of Islamic art.