Making celtic torc

Jewelry Discussion
1

I recently began learning about celtic torcs and decided to try my
hand at them, but my process is in need of some assistance. does
anyone know of any advice or resources that would help? My primary
hangup is in cleanly twisting the wires and making the cable by hand.
Any advice is greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.

Devan Moorman

2 
does anyone know of any advice or resources that would help? My
primary hangup is in cleanly twisting the wires and making the
cable by hand. Any advice is greatly appreciated, thanks in
advance.

There are several styles of torc associated with bronze and iron age
celtic cultures. It would be helpful if you posted a links to a few
images of the type you’re looking to reconstruct.

Elliot
Elliot Nesterman

3

Is there a particular type of torc that you are interested in?
There’s quite a wide variety, using different methods of
construction - from plain barswith a round terminal, to twisted
strips, to complex woven chains.

Once you have decided on the type, things might not be as they first
appear. For any of the heavier solid types, you’d need to cast a bar
and forge it to shape, perhaps gouging out grooves which can then be
twisted to give a spiral. For the lighter types, you might hope to
use modern drawn wire, but this is probably innaccurate - the celts
may not have had access to draw plates, and so even the finer wires
would have to be hammered or swaged (although there are other ways
of “faking” round wire).

In some cases, the torcs might be completely cast - this would
certainly be simpler, but isn’t going to be relevant if you are
trying to produce flexible types.

There’s a good paper from Gold Bulletin, “Celtic Gold Torcs” by
Christiane Eluere, Volume 20, 1987. If you can’t find it online,
email me, and I’ll send you a scan of it. Another good source if
you’re interested in wire twisting is Herbert Maryon’s book
“Metalworking and Enamel”, which has an excellent section with
60-odd different ways of twisting wires.

I’ve probably got a few things I can email you, but I’m not going to
dig them out unless you are genuinely interested, so don’t hesitate
to email me if you are, and I’ll see what I can do. Otherwise, an
aggresive google session should yield some good PDFs.

Jamie Hall
http://primitive.ganoksin.com