XVIII
ENAMELS
ON
COPPER
CHAPTER XVIII
ENAMELS ON COPPER
Processes of enamelling—Chinese and Japanese enamels—British enamels.
Copper has been used frequently as the most suitable metal to coat over with enamels, to be afterwards fired or fixed. Even the ancients discovered the art of colouring the metal-work they had wrought by the aid of different enamels more or less translucent. Such substances were used in varied forms, often as paste, filling up incised designs, the workmen in some cases rubbing them down smooth when fixed, in others firing them by heat or simply heating until they ran smoothly over the surface of the metal to which they adhered. The enamels which are to be obtained vary in substance, the beauty of their workmanship, and in their rarity and curio values. They cover the entire period of known art and although such enamels are widely distributed, the art of enamelling having been practised in almost all countries where art has flourished, some have won greater fame than others, many of these rare types being easily distinguished by characteristic forms, colours, or designs.
Among the earlier exponents of enamelling were the Egyptians, the early Greeks, and to some extent the Romans. It would appear that enamelling was understood, too, in England, and was early practised as a British art, but it soon died out, to be restored again in this country under more favourable circumstances in the greater renaissance of mediæval art.
The enamels which have attained such great fame, and which are so keenly appreciated by connoisseurs, are those made at Limoges in Southern France, and again to a lesser extent in Italy and the Rhenish Provinces. Two beautiful examples of twelfth-century pricket candlesticks, now in the British Museum, are of that early form which, except for ecclesiastical purposes, soon gave way to the socket candlestick, a more convenient form for domestic use.