The proposed work is almost the first and only attempt to combine in one study the history of the emergence and organization of gold and silver in Russia, the characterization of its art centers, its masters, combining this with an analysis of the evolution of forms, the nature of technology and the dependence of all this on general historical conditions. The author manages in a free poetic form to characterize the figurative side of the works, the decorative possibilities of various types of metal processing, to trace the evolution of forms and their existence in different eras and in different materials.