A fine leather roll holding a goldsmith’s working tools: a graduated set of slender needle files with fine cross-hatched teeth, a small pin hammer for setting bezels and forming sheet, pairs of flat-nose and round-nose pliers for bending wire, a polished lens set in a turned wooden mount for close inspection, fine-tipped tweezers for placing stones and wire cuttings, a steel drawplate pierced with graduated holes for drawing wire true, and a set of agate and steel burnishers for bringing surfaces to a mirror polish. Goldsmiths, lapidaries, and enamelers carry such rolls for their day’s work — the tools are small, steel is kept bright, and each piece is fitted to the craftsman’s hand over long years.
The work is measured in hours and fractions of an ounce. A single bezel setting for a finger-ring may demand a dozen tools in sequence, and a master’s kit is quietly the most valuable thing in the workshop after the gold itself. Kits are seldom sold intact; they descend from master to apprentice, and the loss of a favored file or burnisher is felt for seasons before a replacement is dressed in.