A technique used in the decoration of jewelry by soldering it with grains of gold, electrum, or silver. Tiny spherical drops of metal were soldered on to a background, forming the required pattern and giving it a granular texture. The drops may have been made by heating a gold wire until a drop formed, or by melting gold and slowly pouring it into cold water. As also for filigree, the solder was normally a gold-copper alloy with a lower melting point than gold. First used as early as the 3rd millennium BC, it was widely known in western Asia and Egypt. The ancient Greeks perfected the technique, but by the 5th century BC granulation had been largely replaced by filigree in Greek work. The art of granulation probably reached its peak with the Etruscans between the 7th and 6th centuries BC, in the elaborately granulated and embossed earrings, pronged shoulder clasps for clothes, and beads found in Etruscan tombs. Granulation was particularly important in India and Persia after contact with the Roman Empire.