Filligree, or Filigrane, Work, a kind of enrichment on gold or silver, wrought delicately, in manner of little threads or grains, or both intermixed. The word is compounded of fil or filum, "thread," and grannum, "grain." In Latin it is called filatim elaboratum opus, argentum aurum.

There is no manufacture in any part of the world, that has been more admired and celebrated, than the fine gold and silver fillagree of Sumatra. And what renders it a matter of greater curiosity is the coarseness of the tools employed in the workmanship, and which, in the hands of an European, would not be thought sufficiently perfect for the most ordinary purposes.—They are rudely and artificially formed, by the goldsmith (pandi) from any old iron he can pick up. When you engage one of them to execute a piece of work, his first request is usually for a piece of iron hoop, to make his wire-drawing instrument; an old hammer head, stuck in a block, serves for an anvil; and a pair of compasses is often composed of two old nails tied together at one end. The gold is melted in a piece of a preco or earthen rice-pot, or sometimes in a crucible of their own make, of ordinary clay. In general they use no bellows, but blow the fire with their mouths, through a joint of bamboo; and if the quantity of metal to be melted is considerable, three or four persons sit round their furnace, which is an old broken quallæ or iron pot, and blow together. At Padang alone, where the manufacture is more considerable, they have adopted the Chinese bellows. Their method of drawing the wire differs but little from that used by European workmen. When drawn to a sufficient fineness, they flatten it by beating it on their anvil; and when flattened, they give it a twist like that in the whalebone handle of a punch ladle, by rubbing it on a block of wood with a flat stick. After twisting they again beat it on the anvil, and by these means it becomes flat wire with indented edges. With a pair of nippers they fold down the end of the wire, and thus form a leaf, or element of a flower in their work, which is cut off. The end is again folded and cut off, till they have got a sufficient number of leaves, which are laid on singly. Patterns of the flowers or foliage, in which there is not very much variety, are prepared on paper, of the size of the gold plate on which the filagree is to be laid. According to this, they begin to dispose on the plate the larger compartments of the foliage, for which they use plain flat wire of a larger size, and fill them up with the leaves before mentioned. To fix the work, they employ a gelatinous substance, made of the red-hot berry called boca sago, ground to a pulp on a rough stone. This pulp they place on a young Fillets, in the Manege, are the loins of a horse, which begin at the place where the hinder part of the saddle rests.