Damascene

Castles on the Rhine aren't there accidentally. The Rhine is a big river, and ever since boats were invented, this river has been Europe's most valuable means of commerce.  For millennial bends in the river provided ideal spots for bullies to build castles overlooking bends and tributaries to extract fees from merchants needing to go upstream and down.

Toledo was born with that idea in mind; but Spanish rivers are fewer and don't command much commerce.  Still, Toledo is imposing, looming over the plain to the north like a sentinel.  A military couldn't do much about Spain without controlling this city built on a huge rock.  It has the fewest level streets of any European city.

I didn't have an urge to dominate the Castile region, but I did want to spend  time in a city that has a cathedral that resolved its unfinished dome problem by having angels flying around the hole.  I wanted also to see El Greco's home. He couldn't marry the love of his life because, since she was a Jew, if he married her, his son would be ostracized. (You figure that one out).

Actually, I went to Toledo because I'd been told that it is the number one place in the world to see how Damascene is made. The number one shop is just north of the monster rock that is the city.

Damascene refers to Damascus, the probable city of the technique's origin.  The decorated steel figures appeared when Turkey, Syria, and the Caliphs of the Tigris/Euphrates were beating up on everyone in general and had established a lock on southern Spain. The world's best steel then was Persian made. The Caliphates tossed in stuff like Algebra, medicine, cotton, and were pretty good at building palaces and mosques. They became incredibly good at decorating things, including armor and plaster. Decorating their horse trappings and armor with delicate designs of gold on steel was the ultimate in their art.

When Isabella and Fernando rooted out the last of the Moors (who were mostly north African), some Spaniards had mastered this mostly secret art of welding steel to gold.

If it had been the high season, I might have been out of luck to learn much; but as soon as I showed interest in the torches, the supervisor of the shop I examined gave me a tour that lasted all afternoon. The lead welder   explained why the torches were of varying sizes, how they fused the steel and gold, and how the black is applied. I was allowed to meander everywhere, which was about the size of two tennis courts.  As you might expect, not the tiniest amount of gold ever hit the floor, or disappeared.  A little steel might be burned away, but very little of that either.

       

Once I commented on an interesting steel design high on a wall. The foreman instantly went ballistic.  "EL CID!!!" he yelled.

When he eventually cooled off enough to speak at a pace I could track, he led me to understand that a movie company (American) had produced the film "El Cid" on location near Toledo and contracted for all sorts of welding and weaponry and other props useful in the film. But they had not been very forthcoming with cash when due.

"Hollywood!" my tutor finally grumbled, drawing a finger across his throat.  When he eventually stopped sputtering, he murmured something that was probably just as well I couldn't translate.

At last he smiled. He pointed toward a large sign outside the shop that told visitors there was a forty percent discount on Damascene that day.

“For the buses,” he said. “Means nothing." Then he added, "Don't buy when the buses are here. When there is just you, then buy. Not forty percent... Eighty percent.”

I still have the bolo I'd watched him make from a blob of gold and a piece of steel.  AND I got it at eighty per cent off some price he invented because "the bus people" were not shopping.