When doing ceramic photography as well as artifact photography I have 
used both black and a ruby (not red) material background. Sometimes I 
have also used a yellow or bronze filter to reduce shadow and 
punctuate the specimen. (Punctuate-to make clearer)

I use a metric (cm) scale in the picture to show demension and 
sometimes include a label for identification name, location, unit 
etc. This allows me to have not only a pretty picture(?, maybe so, 
maybe not!)) record and helps me to recall the project in spite of my 
halfheimers.

No! No one explained how or why to do this I just experimented. It 
probably isn't proper but I do it anyway.

Just some food for thought1

DP