Ancient jewelers produced a variety of women's jewelry, horse harness items, household utensils, belts, and hunting equipment. They primarily used silver, sometimes gilded, in combination with precious stones. They were familiar with various techniques for manufacturing and finishing products: stamping, openwork carving, embossing, granulation, blackening, and decorating items with enamel.
Kyrgyz blacksmiths and jewelers widely practiced the technique of engraving or stamped decoration for embellishing horse harness items, knives, men's belts, various cases, overlays, and buckles. For this, they first softened the silver through repeated forging, and then applied the resulting silver foil or wire onto the surface of an iron plate with an engraved pattern in the form of a solid mesh or dotted lines. They hammered the foil or wire into the engraving with a special hammer. Wire of various diameters was obtained by drawing prepared rods through a drawing board. Silver wire was used for applications on iron.
Iron helmet of a Kyrgyz warrior from the late medieval period from Ak-Kel
The technique of stamping hollow decorations, usually consisting of two halves, was also used. The matrix was made from the horn of a mountain goat or ram, and the stamp was made from hard metal. Women's jewelry, predominantly earrings, rings, and bracelets, was often decorated with granulation. The granulation technique was known in Kyrgyzstan as early as the 1st millennium BC, during the Saka period, and was used in combination with inlay for decorating earrings, rings, and bracelets.
Embossing on silver became widely practiced. The steel rods used for embossing had various decorative elements at the working end: in the form of a crescent, star, oval, dot, triangle, square, etc. This ornament was applied in various combinations on women's jewelry, on harness decorated with silver plates, on whips, and on scabbards.
Blackening of the surface of women's jewelry, buckles for men's belts, and horse harness items was also applied. A distinctive feature was that blackening was not used as a means of representation, but to create a desired background onto which a pattern was applied. Blackening was predominantly used in the northern regions of Kyrgyzstan. The technique of bluing was also employed—heating the item, especially made of iron and steel, in a forge, resulting in a brown oxide film covering the surface of the item.
Blacksmith masters produced not only jewelry. Their production included metal utensils, saddles, and weapons.
It should be noted that as a decorative applied art, jewelry production, like blacksmithing, as well as other crafts in general, exhibited very distinctive features born from a nomadic lifestyle, preserving ancient elements and traditions. Crafts and art had not evolved into guild organizations and had not separated from pastoral and agricultural economies; their fate entirely depended on the needs of the indigenous population, i.e., they were adapted to serve the nomadic lifestyle of the Kyrgyz. The specific characteristics of Kyrgyz decorative applied art and the jewelry craftsmanship of ancient nomads included the following:
• There were no special premises for work. Since the main occupation was still nomadic or semi-nomadic animal husbandry, somewhat combined with agriculture, the Kyrgyz engaged in art and craftsmanship occasionally, as orders came in;
• Masters mainly used natural dyes and homemade tools, some of which were passed down through generations;
• The entire labor process, starting from the initial processing of the material, and in some cases starting from the extraction of raw materials (metal) to the finishing of the finished product, was usually concentrated in the hands of one master;
• The predominant form of payment for specialists was in kind, with products of craftsmanship being sold both within and outside the aul or clan collective;
• There was almost no connection between masters and the market, both in terms of sourcing materials and selling products. There were also no intermediary instances in the sale of decorative applied art and crafts;
• Products were mainly made from the customer's material, while auxiliary raw materials and individual tools, such as scrap metal, were purchased by the masters in the market. It was also practiced for the master to produce raw materials, particularly metal, himself;
• Even at that time, there was training in the techniques of decorative applied art and craftsmanship. However, most often, mastery was passed down through inheritance;
• Many masters combined such specialties as blacksmithing, jewelry making, woodworking, leatherworking, etc., meaning they were simultaneously woodworkers, tanners, shoemakers, weavers, stonecutters, weaponsmiths, etc.
Overall, material culture and decorative applied art met the demands of a nomadic pastoral society. Their foundation was functionality, with beauty following in its wake. As noted by the renowned theorist and specialist in the history of decorative applied arts, Henri de Morand, "every master of decorative art is primarily a craftsman." Therefore, the personality of the artist in the past was not given special importance. Usually, artists were not distinguished from ordinary craftsmen, which is why their names have not survived, yet they enjoyed a certain respect and authority among the people. Their works, which have reached our days, impress us as beautiful timeless examples of art.
