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26 November 2026‘The Silver Thread: silver filigree and traditional arts in Kosovo’
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Lecture: ‘The Silver Thread: silver filigree and traditional arts in Kosovo’ Lecturer: Elizabeth Gowing Thursday 26 November 2026

Venue: GREETHAM VALLEY GOLF CLUB

From the early Kosovan silver mines which are  mentioned in Dante, through the twentieth  century politics over Kosovo’s mines which  resulted in both a war and a golf course, a silver  thread winds through Kosovo’s history.  Its most intricate tanglings are in the country’s  cultural capital, Prizren, where a seventh  generation of filigree artisans use ‘filum’ and  ‘granum’, zigzags, ‘mouse-tooth’ designs and  other twists and turns to magic lacy creations  from dull sticks of raw material.  The results – in boxes, buttons, jewellery,  religious ornamentation and the talismans of  superstition – are a fine narrative of Kosovo’s  history and traditions. 


Medieval panagiarion Serbian. Photo: JohnGotten. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike  4.0