ENAMELWORK

technique of decoration whereby metal objects or surfaces are given a glasslike glaze that is fused onto the surface by intense heat to create a brilliantly coloured decorative effect. It is an art form noted for its brilliant, glossy surface, which is hard and long lasting. A brief account of enamelwork follows. For full treatment, see Decorative Arts and Furnishings: Enamelwork. Enamelwork as a decorative art has affinities with inlay, mosaic, and painting. Objects most suitable for enamelling tend to be those that are delicate and small in scale. The technique is particularly well suited to the decoration of small, precious luxury objects, such as jewelry, snuffboxes, scent bottles, watches, and ecclesiastical objects. It is not, however, necessarily limited to such use. Enamel itself is a comparatively soft glass. Various colours are obtained by adding metal oxides of various colours to the base enamel, called flux, or frit. By varying the proportions of different components, different colours are created. The best and most strikingly vivid colours tend to be the blues and greens, formed by adding an oxide of copper to the enamel flux. The enamel can be made more or less translucent or opaque by varying the components used. Wet powder is spread onto the prepared metal surface of the object to be decorated and then allowed to dry before being heated, or fired, in a furnace. The heat causes the enamel to melt and to fuse with its metal base and to form the hard vitreous surface characteristic of enamelwork. The temperature at which the enamel is fired and, in particular, its consistency throughout the period of firing is crucial and will greatly affect the aesthetic properties and technical quality of the finished work. There are many different techniques of enamelwork and an especially large variety of methods whereby the powdered enamel can be applied to the metal base. Various metals can be decorated with enamelwork, but the most common are copper, brass, bronze, and gold. Two of the best known techniques are cloisonn and champlev. In both of these processes, the design is delineated by an outline of metal within which the enamels are applied. In cloisonn work, thin strips of metal are soldered to the metal base to outline the design. In champlev work, the base metal surface is cut away and the enamel is applied to the recesses so created, leaving the metal outline at surface level. In painted enamelwork, the colours are not separated by metal strips, and so the effect is less like that of a miniature stained-glass window and more like that of an oil painting. Enamelwork may have existed as early as the 13th to the 11th century BC in Mycenaean civilization. It was certainly known to the Celts and the Romans. It reached its first real peak as a decorative art in the Byzantine Empire, during which time remarkable cloisonn works on gold were made. It flourished throughout medieval and Renaissance Europe. Particularly fine work was done around the year 1200 in Limoges, Fr. In the 17th century, French craftsmen, led by Jean I Toutin of Chateaudun, invented a type of enamel miniature painting. The technique of transferring a design onto an enamelled box was perfected at Battersea, Eng., in the mid-18th century. Precious objects of gold, enamel, and jewels were among the highly prized exquisite objects made by the Russian jeweller Carl Faberg at the turn of the 20th century. Enamelwork has a long tradition in China and Japan as well, but it is almost certain that the technique was originally introduced to China (and then to Japan) from Europe. Particularly fine cloisonn enamels, especially vases, were made in China during the Ming dynasty. In the late 19th century, Japanese craftsmen perfected a lineless cloisonn technique in which the brilliant colours characteristic of cloisonn work could be produced without the usual lines formed by the metal strips. technique of decoration whereby metal objects or surfaces are given a vitreous glaze that is fused onto the surface by intense heat to create a brilliantly coloured decorative effect. It is an art form noted for its brilliant, glossy surface, which is hard and long-lasting. Enamels have long been used to decorate the surface of metal objects, perhaps originally as a substitute for the more costly process of inlaying with precious or semiprecious stones but later as a decorative medium in their own right. Whereas paint on metal has a short life and, even when new, is overshadowed by the brilliance of the polished metal, enamelling gives the surface of metal a durable, coloured, decorative finish. With the painted enamels of the Renaissance and the portrait miniatures of the 17th century, the technique reached its most ambitious and artistic form, in which the craftsman attempted to create a version of an oil painting, using a metal sheet instead of a canvas and enamels instead of oil paints. This medium undoubtedly has its limitationsfew painted-enamel plaques of the Renaissance, for example, are much more than one foot squarebut while oil paints on canvas eventually fade and darken, the colours of enamels are permanent. Relatively few creative artists of distinction have chosen to work in this medium, however, and it has tended to be purely decorative. Few types of metal objects have not, at some period, been enriched with enamelled decoration. Throughout history, jewelry has been made more colourful by the application of enamels. Similarly, arms and armour, horse trappings, and even domestic items, such as mirrors and hanging bowls, were embellished with enamel decoration. Throughout the Middle Ages, both secular and ecclesiastical objects, such as chalices, cups, reliquaries, caskets, crosiers (a staff carried by bishops and abbots as a symbol of office), and spoons, were elaborately enamelled. With the advent of painted enamels in the Renaissance, tableware was completely covered with enamel, and painted-enamel panels were used to decorate the ceilings and walls of rooms in the chteaus of France. Following upon the invention of the domestic table clock and of the watch in the 16th century, enamelling became one of the most popular forms of decoration for the dials and cases; by the 18th century, items of the drawing room, such as snuffboxes, etuis (cases for small articles like scissors and needles), tea caddies, candlesticks, scent bottles, and thimbles, were frequently made of enamel. Among the objects decorated with enamels in East Asia are vases, incense vessels, teapots, suits of armour, and sliding doors. Additional reading Materials and techniques Kenneth Francis Bates, Enameling: Principles and Practice (1951); Herbert Maryon, Metalwork and Enamelling, 4th ed. (1959), contains a useful bibliography; Margaret Seeler, The Art of Enameling (1969). Periods and centres of production Klaus Wessel, Byzantine Enamels from the 5th to the 13th Century (1968); Luigi Malle, Cloisonns bizantini (1970); Shalva Amiranashvili, Medieval Georgian Enamels of Russia (1964); Mary Chamot, English Mediaeval Enamels (1930); W.L. Hildburgh, Medieval Spanish Enamels and Their Relation to the Origin and the Development of Copper Champlev Enamels of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (1936); Marie-Madeleine Gautnier, Ernaux limousins champlevs des XIIe, XIIIe, and XIVe sicles (1950); J.J. Marquet de Vasselot, Les Crosses limousines du XIIIe sicle (1941); Paul Thoby, Les Croix limousines de la fin du XIIe sicle au debut du XIVe sicle (1953); Katia Guth-Dreyfus, Transluzides Email in der ersten Hlfte des 14 Jahrhunderts am Ober-, Mittel-, und Niederrhein (1954); Philippe Verdier, Catalogue of the Painted Enamels of the Renaissance in the Walters Art Gallery (1967), with an excellent bibliography; Henri Clouzot, Dictionnaire des miniaturistes sur mail (1924) and La Miniature sur mail en France (1928); Pierre F. Schneeberger, Les Peintres sur mail genevois au XVIIe et au XVIIIe sicle (1958); Charles Beard, Bavarian Enamels of the Seventeenth Century, Connoisseur, 97:267271 (1936); Edward Dillon, English Enamels on Brass of the Seventeenth Century, Burlington Magazine, 16:261 (1910); Egan Mew, Battersea Enamels (1926), out of date in some respects; Sandor Mihalik, Emailkunst im alten Ungarn (1961; Eng. trans., Old Hungarian Enamels, 1961); Harry Garner, Chinese and Japanese Cloisonn Enamels (1962), with a full bibliography; Lawrence A. Coben and Dorothy C. Ferster, Japanese Cloisonne: History, Technique, and Appreciation (1982), is meant for collectors and scholars.