Metal Embossing - Art or craft?

It's both; one must have both metallurgy and artistic skills to produce anything worth its art.

But do you have to be really skillful and strong to do that?

My mother made a transition from glass stein and clay sculpture to metal embossing and she gets really tired after finishing a piece. I still haven't seen any of her work - we live in opposite continents.

You can make thin embossed sheets by putting them through a printing press with a lino cut. That's the only kind of embossing I've ever done

- (also with paper and no printing ink to emboss good quality art paper - that produces a lovely minimalist, subtle embossed image)

What sort of technique is involved in your mother's work?

Base on what she has told me, she does it by hand and she uses a hammer within other things - I just asked her to sent me some pictures - she is trying to mix glass with metal for visual effect.

obviously quite a heavy weight of metal then

It sounds interesting

I know that brass and copper is used (in addition to other metals), but I would imagine it depends on how thick the metal is concerning amount of effort needed. I'm not sure how difficult it is to fuse glass with metal, but it can't be that easy.

I'm not sure what she's doing , I do know that she has done some big bottles and decorating them with color and embossed metal, she also doing reliefs and small figures.

I'm really intrigue by it, specially since she has a very wild imagination.

You can also use thin copper or brass sheets and transfer images onto these sheets from a sketch on paper using some simple tools. Then you work both sides by pushing and outlining the shapes into the rubber mat till you have embossed image. It is quite straight forward and you dont need heavy equipment to do it.
Jules

Thank you JulesMV, that's very helpful information.

I know I took my time but thank you all.