From the Byzantine period to the present day, the main materials used to manufacture secular and ecclesiastical objects have been gold and silver, followed by copper and brass.
In Epiros, where the art of gold and silver-working was highly developed, silver was the basic material used in the Post-Byzantine period. Gold virtually disappeared as a material, as is evident from the absence of gold artefacts at this period, while items (both secular and other) made of cheaper materials (copper, brass) made their appearance. Gold is found in folk art only in the form of gilding.
Epirot craftsmen procured silver either by melting down old silver objects and coins, or from the mines of the Mademochoria or other mines in Chalkidiki. They occasionally imported it from abroad (Italy, or Odessa).
Silver objects bore a stamp indicating the degree of purity, just as today the degrees and the melting point of the metal are indicated. The stamps varied from region to region and from period to period, and indicated the workshop. Unfortunately, however, they are not always present, and the lack of signatures and dates makes it impossible to determine the workshop in which they were made, or the name of the artist.
Today the degrees of the silver are fixed internationally and a stamp with the accurate information is mandatory and no longer depends on the artist's sense of pride.
Silver artefacts are classified in three categories according to the manner in which the raw-material is worked: forged, turned, and cast.

Forged pieces are ones in which the shape is formed by a hammer on an anvil, after the craftsmen has first heated the metal and made it into sheets. After this, almost any form of decoration can be applied to the object.

Turned pieces are those in which the shape is formed by a hammer on an anvil, but after the bars of silver have been converted into sheets by turning on a lathe. Forged pieces are more personal, distinctive creations, since no two artefacts can ever be completely identical once the human hand intervenes. A slight inequality in the thickness of the silver can often be detected in these cases, whereas lathe-turned items made of sheets of equal thickness from the lathe are characterised by a formal perfection.

Cast pieces were either small self-contained pieces or elements of larger objects (e.g. small plaques that were stuck to jewellery, plaques that were attached to velvet Gospel Book bindings, pieces that were fitted together to make belts, necklaces, etc.). As today, moulds made of bronze, rubber or iron were used and filled with a special earth in which the original was impressed (pantephia). Molten metal was then poured in to receive the form of the original. The object was finished and decorated with a variety of designs worked with the chisel and various spitsounia.