EUROPEAN ENAMELS
While it is true that few collectors of the present day can aspire to
any goodly number of really fine examples of European enamels, the
subject is nevertheless one of great interest, and the author believes
there are many who will find pleasure in a study of the enamels of
European fabrication, particularly those objects familiarly known as
Limoges enamels but more properly to be called painted enamels to
distinguish them from the cloisonné and the champlevé enamels. It may be
well to indicate here the characteristics of the several groups.
_Cloisonné_: As early as the time of the ancients it was found that to
prevent the running together of molten glass enamels, little boundaries
of metal wire could be devised for soldering on to the metal base to
mark the divisions of the pattern, or merely to bound areas, thus
forming a number of diminutive shallow “pans,” into which the melted
flux expanded, and when cooled and polished revealed a surface level
with the height of the wire cloisons, giving them the appearance of
being metal wires that had been imbedded in the glass. Gold, being
neutral to every known color, is the harmonizer paramount, and thus when
gold cloisons were used, the various colors were knit together into
esthetically pleasing surfaces. The little metal threads running through
modern Japanese enamels are such cloisons. Cloisonné enamel is the
earliest sort of true enamel known to us. It was the favorite Byzantine
process, and also that of the Greeks, the Anglo-Saxons, the Chinese, and
later of the Japanese and the Russians.
_Relief Cloisonné._ This term is used to designate those pieces wherein
the enamel either is below or above the tops of the cloisons, or where
only certain cloisons enclose enamel, or a combination of the three
sorts, giving to the surface of an object completed in this manner an
interesting uneven ground of smooth but unpolished enamel. The cloisons
of much of this work, especially the Hungarian and the Russian, are of
filigree wire, or twisted wire, instead of flat wire such as was used
for this purpose by Byzantine craftsmen.
_Champlevé._ This is the name given to the process of gouging out of a
field (_champ_) of metal a number of hollows (_lévées_) or “ditches”
for the pattern, in which cut-out depressions the vitreous color is
fused and becomes enamel. It is akin to the ancient Egyptian method of
scooping out surfaces in gold, soapstone, wool, and other materials,
inserting therein bits of colored glass. Had the Egyptians practised
true enameling, doubtless their process would have begun with champlevé,
for they did not anticipate the Greek goldsmiths, who worked patterns on
gold in cloisons long before they had any idea of applying vitreous
color thereto. Indeed, the early Greeks and the Etruscans were
wonderfully skilful at soldering gold. This champlevé process might be
termed Gothic, succeeding in introduction though not superseding the
Byzantine cloisonné. However, centuries before Byzantine or Gothic works
appeared, the Celts produced champlevé enamels.
_Repoussé._ This term is applied to the base of those objects wherein
the ornament is beaten out, in silhouette as it were, in the metal and
the details marked by cloisons let in. Much of this work is easily
mistaken for champlevé, but where the pattern is scooped out in
champlevé, it is beaten out in repoussé. One who has visited the
treasury of St. Mark’s in Venice will recall that the plaquettes from a
Gospel cover to be found there were executed in repoussé--the pattern
simply hammered in the silver, which afterward was filled with
translucent enamel. In Oriental repoussé work the metal divisions
between the fields of enamel are beaten up, the reverse of the process
just described. In modern Chinese enamel-work the repoussé process has
superseded champlevé for effects of the sort.
_Basse Taille._ This is the process of engraving the ground, which is to
receive translucent enamel, so that the lines made by the graver will
show up through the translucent vitrified coating and produce a greater
play of light, or define patterns, the veining of leaves, the marking of
petals, the lines of draperies, etc. The French enamelers of the
eighteenth century habitually employed the process, and Indian enamelers
preceded them by at least a century, while its invention is ascribed to
an Italian, John of Pisa, in 1286. This chasing or engraving upon gold
or silver for the purpose of showing graduation in the vitreous color to
be applied is akin to champlevé.
_Plique à Jour._ Enamels of this sort consist of certain screen-like
objects in filigree with their unbacked cloison divisions filled up with
translucent enamel. _Plique à Jour_ enamel may be compared to
stained-glass windows, the principle being the same, only carried out on
a miniature scale. An excellent example of this is a fifteenth-century
cup in the Victoria and Albert Museum, while the Crown of St. Stephen,
dating from 1072 A.D., would appear to be the earliest known work of the
sort that has survived. The Russians of the nineteenth century so
perfected the process that _plique à jour_ enamel is often called
Russian enamel. Doubtless the forming of cups, caskets, and other
precious objects of gems in unbacked mosaic suggested the style, and the
jeweled cup of Chosroes to be seen in the Bibliothéque Nationale, Paris,
may well be considered a forerunner of it.
_Encrusted Enamel._ This may be defined as enamel used to enrich raised
and modeled gold-work where this vitreous color is neither entrenched,
as in cloisonné or in champlevé, nor painted, like Limoges work, on a
flat field. The craftsmen of the Renaissance, both in Italy and in
France, produced exquisite jewels of encrusted enamel, imitated by the
Florentine jewelers of to-day who display their wares along the shops of
the Ponte Vecchio. Painted enamels in this group may be sub-divided as
follows:
(A) Those works which have vitreous colors added here and there to
subdue, to correct, or to outline and decorate enamel surfaces, such as
the pale yellows added to soften glaring whites, red to restore a color
unsuccessful in the firing, outlines of plants and other forms and
inscriptions. Used in combination with both cloisonné and champlevé, and
later to add further decorations to basse taille surfaces.
(B) Those works painted with successive firings of translucent or
transparent colored enamels over a primary enamel ground that first has
been fused to its metal field of gold, silver, or copper. Limoges
enamels of this sort, whether in color or in grisaille (gray), as also
are the much-neglected enamels known as Venetian enamels.
* * * * *
So much for the general broad divisions of enamels, though it must be
borne in mind that there was often employed in the working out of a
single object more than a single process. As color plays so important a
part in the evolution of the history of enamels, the following table may
prove useful to the collector as determining the more important colors
of the enameler’s palette at different periods in the history of the
art:
COLORS AND PERIODS
_Greek Work._ The colors used by the Greeks were opaque white,
blue, and green.
_Barbaric Work._ British, Gallic, Celtic, and Roman-Provincial
enamelers used scarlet, cobalt blue, dark green, yellows through
light shades to orange and to ochre; white, black, and possibly
turquoise.
_Early Byzantine Work_ employed opaque scarlet, coral, white,
black, and translucent sapphire blue, emerald, green, ruby red, and
manganese violet.
_Later Byzantine Work._ Added to the above colors, toward the
eleventh century, cobalt blue and turquoise, pale yellow, and a
flesh tint.
_Early Limoges Work_ relied upon blue, green, red, with purple and
iron gray, and the lighter half-tones known before the twelfth
century.
_Later Limoges Work._ Its full palette is composed of deep blue to
lapis blue and light blue; scarlet, a red approaching chocolate,
green, greenish yellow, white, and a semi-translucent manganese
purple. In thirteenth-century work blue is the dominating color.
The twelfth-century translucent colors give way to the consistent
use of opaque ones in the years following.
_Germanic Work._ This contains less cobalt blue, but employes the
colors of the Limoges workers, introducing, however, a great deal
of turquoise and much more green and pale yellow than the French
enamelers used. The German enamelers were fond of black, also.
Nearly every writer upon enamels quotes the convenient commendation of
the Greek sophist, Philostratus, who went to Rome in the reign of the
Emperor Severus, about 200 A.D., to teach rhetoric. In the description
of a boar hunt in his “Icones,” wherein he describes the trappings of
the horses of the barbarians (Gauls or Britons), Philostratus writes:
“For the barbarians of the region of the ocean [islanders?] are skilled,
as it is said, in fusing colors upon heated brass [copper?] which become
as hard as stone and render the ornament thus produced durable.” The
Romans in Italy knew nothing of such things. Labarte and other
authorities would have it that this passage refers to Gallo-Roman work,
though such is rarely to be met with; while others claim for it
reference to the work of British craftsmen, perhaps under
design-influence of the Romans. Probably enameling was known to the
Celts and to the Britons independent of Roman occupation. Certainly the
Scoto-Celtic and the Britanno-Celtic tendency in design has little in
common with that of the ancient civilized world of Greece, of Rome, or
of Egypt. It is just possible the ingenious Celts invented champlevé.
With the rise of the Eastern Empire in the fourth century A.D., with its
capital at Byzantium, came in that style of art known to us as the
Byzantine, just as the North Italians produced the Lombardic style and
western Europe the Gothic. Byzantine enamel was rigid and conventional
in design but highly decorative and symbolical. At first the direct
influence of Greek and Roman art affected their pictorial
representations, as we see Christus in earlier work depicted as a
clean-shaven, beautiful young man, an ideal that soon gave way to the
sad representation of the Man of Sorrows. From the tenth century on,
Byzantine ecclesiastical art was barren of invention. With the waning of
the empire in 1057, the art of the Byzantine enamelers declined, and
that of the Italians and the western Europeans blossomed forth
untrammeled by stiff convention. Lombardic architecture and Gothic
carving had helped to pave the way for the broader art of the Middle
Ages, which no longer confined itself to cloisonné but began to put
forth champlevé enamels of great beauty likewise. Indeed, in Gothic
times western craftsmen rarely made use of cloisonné except for personal
ornaments and jewelry. The famous “Lindauer Evangeliar,” one of the
chief treasures collected by the late J. Pierpont Morgan, exhibits upon
its covers superb examples of early enameling.
With the revival of classical learning which brought about the
Renaissance, and the subsequent development of secular thought, art
ceased to be what it had been throughout the Middle Ages--merely the
handmaid of the church. No longer did the enamelers, Byzantine, Gothic,
or Lombardic, work solely to adorn religious works; and ecclesiastical
design broadened into secular application, a return of classical usages
to a heritage of beauty and unrestraint from which, for some centuries,
art had been kept by ecclesiasticism. By the twelfth century the art was
well established to Cologne, Trèves, Huy, Maestricht, and Verdun, thence
traveling perhaps to Paris. Limoges and the Rhenish provinces of France
became prolific in champlevé enamels by the end of the twelfth century.
It is to 1189 A.D. that the earliest known enamels of Limoges are
ascribed. There an enormous quantity of work, good, bad, and
indifferent, was turned out during the thirteenth century, an art
turning to a trade thereafter, and declining to neglect in the
fourteenth, and then going out of fashion altogether.
However, toward the end of the fifteenth century the public in general
had broken through Byzantine, Gothic, and Lombardic esthetic domination
and breathed the clearer air of the Renaissance, becoming imbued with a
desire for gentler, more beautiful things; and the old town of Limoges,
ever awake to the commerce of demand, again started up her enameling
ovens and went at the art with renewed vigor, retaining a supremacy that
has handed down to us priceless treasures of the sort, exquisite and
satisfying. This fine style may be said to date from 1530 to 1580 (being
preceded by the early style 1475-1530), followed by a minute style,
1580-1630 preceding the decadence that dated from 1630 to the close of
the manufactory in the eighteenth century.
Limoges enamels immediately bring to mind the names of such great
artists in enamels as the Pénicauds, Courtoys, Limousin, Raymond, Martin
Didier and Jean Court, dit Vigier, and in the decline Jean Laudin.
The painted enamels of the early style are executed with much white
painting over purplish-brown grounds, the figures bearing strong
resemblance to the Flemish type. The coloring in these examples is very
beautiful. The painted enamels of the fine style exhibit the great
advance achieved by draftsmen under Italian influence. The glazes are
finer and the finishing process a more careful one. At this period
painting in grisaille became popular. By this term is meant monochrome
painting in enamel the light being worked up over a dark
[Illustration: Oval Dish by Bernard Palissy, 1510-1589]
[Illustration:
_Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art_
Lumières by Bernard Palissy, 1540-1590]
[Illustration: Limoges Enamel Covered Cup Attributed to Pierre Raymond]
[Illustration:
_Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art._
Champlevé Enamel Casket, French, 13th Century]
ground, stage by stage, in white, leaving the chiaroscuro to be
determined by the effect of the ground showing through. Shading was
often further emphasized by black lines or hatchings. The resulting gray
tone gives the style its name. Later, relief from the monotony of gray
was found by the addition of one or two tints, such as flesh tint, as
may be seen in the work of Jean Pénicaud, Pierre Raymond, and Léonard
Limousin. Perhaps Pierre Raymond distinguishes himself as exhibiting the
finest color sense, though he may not have possessed Léonard Limousin’s
qualities of bold and direct handling. This latter artist, who worked
from 1532 to 1574 and advertised himself in a little panel introduced
into one of his works as “Enameller and Painter to the Chamber of the
King,” was a consummate portraitist, and executed some splendid
portraits in enamel. Any one who is acquainted with Italian faience will
be struck by the relationships in effect between maiolica ware and
Limoges enamels.
After Jean Limousin, descendant of the great Léonard, and his school,
enameling as a truly fine art began to die out at Limoges, in 1610.
Colin, Martin, Poncet, Laudin, and the Noalhers carried on the work, but
Jean Limousin stood shoulders above them all. Toutin introduced
enamel-painting on gold in 1732 and the products became daintily and
insipidly delicate, quite in the taste of Louis XIV and his successors,
until at last enameling became little better than a rivaling imitation
of china-painting.