【Ancient Chinese Gold Techniques】Granulation

This video introduces one of the ancient gold techniques, granulation. Granulation is a metalworking technique where precious metals, such as gold, copper, etc., are made into small grains to decorate an object. There is a long history of granulation, the technique was introduced to China during the late Warring States period, and became widely popular during Han and Tang dynasties as an important decoration technique for gold wares. According to studies, one of the major methods for making these little gold granules is called the “shrinking method”. The first step of the “shrinking method” is to cut the gold wires into small pieces, then put some burnt charcoal powders in a crucible. Small pieces of gold wires will then automatically shrink into gold granules while the crucible is heated up inside an oven. After cooling down, the granules will be revealed once the charcoal powders covering are removed.