Creation of a Chrisme Medal in 18K Gold

THE Chrism is a Christian religious symbol which is commonly found engraved on baptismal medals.

It must be said that it is perhaps the most important Christian symbol after the cross, this monogram symbolizing Jesus Christ.

For this project religious gold medalwe started from our customer’s wishes in order to represent the chrism and other Christian symbols engraved in relief on the front of the medal while his name was engraved with a diamond tip on the back.

You can get an idea of ​​the final result of this medal, entirely made of 18k yellow gold in our goldsmith workshop.

Christian religious medal in 18k gold

This medal is quite large as it has a diameter of 25 millimeters for a weight of 10 grams in 18 karat gold, while religious baptismal medals usually have a diameter of 18 millimeters for a weight of 2/3 grams in 18 karat gold.

Below you can see several examples of personalized medals in silver or gold.

The design of the medal

The Christian symbols of Chrism and Fish are embossed in polished gold on a brushed gold background, accompanied by the Alpha and Omega.

On the back, our client’s name is engraved with a diamond tip on a shiny gold background.

Religious symbols

There are three of them, chrism, alpha and omega, fish.

Chrism

Chrism is an ancient Christian symbol composed of the letters of the Greek alphabet

It is often accompanied by the letters Alpha and Omega

The alpha and the omega

Respectively the first and last letter of the Greek alphabet, they symbolize totality, the beginning and the end.

The fish symbol

The fish is one of the symbols that the first Christians used to recognize themselves while they were still persecuted.

3D drawing

Based on these symbols and our client’s wishes, we created a digital mockup of the medal design to ensure correct placement of these on the front side of the medal.

We can compare this draft with the drawing initially provided by our client to explain his needs.

This description, which may seem very succinct, helped us a lot in the development of the digital model, so much so that only two iterations were needed to finish and validate the medal design.

Once the project has been validated by our customer, we can begin production, certain of respecting the shapes, dimensions and positioning of all symbols without risk of error.

Gold production

This operation is performed with a jeweler’s ankle, manually cutting rolled sheets of 18k gold.

Our gold is first melted and then poured to form an ingot.

View of the molten gold, then once cast into an ingot

The gold can then be rolled to obtain a plate of the desired thickness.

The drawing of our medal in 1:1 scale is glued onto this plate so that the golden symbols can then be cut out by clipping.

View of the symbols cut out of our yellow gold plate

The gold disc of the medal on which the religious symbols will be welded is also cut into this plaque.

View of our cut out symbols and our gold metal whose background has been brushed

These parts are then assembled by gold brazing, then also the bail and finally this unique jewel is finalized by meticulous polishing which gives us this final result.

View of the engraving of the name on the back, made with diamond tip on a polished gold surface.

View the name engraved on the back of the gold medal

Here are some other Christian religious or baptismal jewelry creations in gold and silver.

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