FILIGREE
### I. IN ART
Filigree is defined as a type of goldsmithing work made from twisted threads of gold or silver, interwoven to form arabesques or patterns, and soldered at the points of contact. The secret that long made filigree work the prerogative of certain goldsmiths lay precisely in concealing the soldering.
The Far East may have known filigree from very ancient times, and from the East the fashion spread to Byzantium; during the Middle Ages, it became widely diffused in Genoa and Venice. In France, it arrived somewhat later, around the 16th century.
In Venice, filigree adornments appear in the silver antependium donated by Patriarch Pellegrino II (1195–1204) to the cathedral of Cividale, but many other objects in the Treasury of St. Mark’s are also wrought in this technique. The Tuscan scholar Tabanelli also attributes to Venetian workmanship the clasp found in the tomb of Clement IV (d. 1268) in Viterbo, as well as the ornaments on the crystal candelabra donated by Charles II of Anjou to St. Nicholas in Bari. Besides these Venetian examples, certain works by the Byzantines themselves deserve mention; in Sicily, they left, for instance, the rich gold filigree found in the tomb of Constance (now in the cathedral of Palermo), set with enamels, gems, and pearls, in which the filigree covers the entire dome. Filigree similar to these Sicilian examples—which differ from the Venetian ones in that the threads are not twisted but curled—and in which the work of Muslim artists may perhaps also be seen, is found in many other objects of the Norman treasury in Vienna.
### II. IN BIBLIOPHILY
In bibliophily, which borrowed the term from metalworking, filigree denotes the watermark that the papermaker impressed on the sheet of paper by means of a metal wire design inserted into the mold (v. CARTA). The filigree thus constitutes the manufacturer’s mark of the paper mill and is represented by an endless variety of designs, which sometimes gave their names to particular types of paper. The earliest known example dates to 1282 and depicts a cross.
Since it was impressed at the center of the sheet, its position in the leaves of a book varies according to the format, depending on how the sheet was folded. It is an extremely important critical element for detecting forgeries, determining the date and provenance of undated manuscripts and paper documents. Today, it is encountered only in fine papers and in banknote paper.