Conventionally, jewelry and fine arts and crafts and the like made of precious metals, typified by rings and the like, are generally produced by the casting or forging of a material containing a precious metal such as silver or gold.
However, in recent years, precious metal clays containing precious metal powders such as silver or gold (clay-like compositions for forming sintered bodies) have become commercially available, and methods have been proposed for producing precious metal jewelry and fine arts and crafts having any desired shape by making these precious metal clays into the desired arbitrary shape and then performing firing (for example, see Patent Documents 1 to 3).
By using these types of methods, precious metal clays can be used to freely shape forms in the same manner as typical clay work, and by drying the shaped body obtained by shaping the precious metal clay, and then firing the clay in a heating furnace, precious metal jewelry and fine arts and crafts and the like can be produced extremely easily.