About Wire History

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Free Patterns    About Beads    Tips    Trivia     From about 3,000 BC the Egyptians were working with wire. The first crude attempts to roll wire and on through the use of draw plates in roughly the sixth century BC in Persia were in all probability for use in jewelry or decorations and other adornments. It was not until roughly the tenth century AD that wire made it into the commercial realm.     The market for industrial items such as needles, fish hooks, chains and chain mail having already been established, wire making and wire working started to truly come into its own. No longer "just a jewelry thing", the economics of making wire required mechanization. A water-driven drawplate machine came about in the fourteenth century, but took a long time to come into common use in central Europe and England.     Europe exported wire to the United States until the war of 1812 got in the way of that and America began producing it's own. By the mid-nineteenth century developments in making wire and the invention of the steam engine to power factories allowed a really wide array of wires to be produced. Woven and braided wires, barbed fencing wire and numerous other industry oriented wires and wire products were abundant. Due to the rusting of metals, tinning and blacking became the best way to protect wire and diminish as best possible the effects of corrosion. By turn of the century a veritable cornucopia of products made of wire were available.     Craftsmen of all sorts found use upon use for wire. A jewelers stock in trade, wire skillfully twisted, bent and curved, soldered or unsoldered was a good base upon which to create many marvelous and beautiful pieces of jewelry. Either set with stones or not, the flash and sparkle of wire can definitely dress up jewelry and enhance the clothes with which worn. Contact The Wire Wizard at: PO Box 50312, Bellevue, WA 98015-0312 Call toll-free at (866) 881-9698 E-Mail:  BeadLady @ TheWireWizard.com All content on The Wire Wizard website including text and images are copyright 1999 - 2007