Assorted Thimbles: Horn & Sterling Silver Designs

• Horn - Full horns were used for making drinking vessels and powder horns. A number of larger horns or antlers could be combined together to make furniture and decorative items such as chairs and lamps.
  
  As a material, horn was formerly used in all types of objects such as snuff boxes, lanterns, musical instruments, items for personal grooming, cutlery handles, walking sticks. Some items of horn are finely decorated with silver or mounted in silver.
• Guilloche - A form of classical decoration consisting of a repeating ornament of interlacing curved bands, sometimes forming circles, and further decorated with rosettes or other flower forms.
  
  The name is derived from the inventor, French engineer Guillot, who invented a mechanical method of inscribing fine repeating patterns on to metallic surfaces.
  
  On enamelled items with guilloche decoration, the surface is firstly engraved with the repeating pattern, and then covered with several layers of enamel, each of which is fired.
  
  Where the item has not been enamelled the form of decoration is usually called "engine turned".
• Sterling Silver - Sterling silver is a mixture of 92.5% pure silver and 7.5% of another metal, usually copper. Fine silver is 99.9% pure silver, and is relatively soft and the addition of the very small amount of copper gives the metal enough strength and hardness to be worked into jewellery, decorative and household objects.

This item has been included into following indexes:

• sewing, implements and accessories - thimbles 174