Fig. 172.—Queen Eleanor’s Cloak Clasp. Champlevé Enamel. Thirteenth century.
Of the various methods of enamelling that which is known as Champlevé is especially associated with Gothic art. Among the most interesting of the personal ornaments is the cloak clasp of Queen Eleanor, wife of the warrior King Edward I (Fig. 172). Here the arms of her husband, England, with those of her own blood, Castile and Leon, unite to make a unique fastening to the Royal mantle of that Queen “of Good Memory.” This clasp was probably made at Limoges, where Champlevé enamel was certainly produced as early as the latter half of the twelfth century and probably earlier, the art having been imported, it is said, from Venice, whither it had come from the East.
At this same time heraldry was coming into systematic form, and enamel was soon employed to display it on the Royal and other monuments, beginning perhaps with the memorial slab to Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou (father of Henry II), who died in 1151, which is now in the Museum at Le Mans.
The succeeding centuries are increasingly rich in heraldic enamels, the shields in the monuments of Edward III and his Queen, Philippa of Hainault, and on the magnificent tomb of William de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, in Westminster Abbey, may be taken as examples. The shield on the latter monument is reproduced by Boutell and others and will well repay study, especially when it is rendered in the colour which is necessary to a full appreciation of its beauty (Fig. 174).
Towards the end of the mediaeval period began the Garter stall-plates already alluded to as still to be seen on the panels of St. George’s Chapel, which date from the early fifteenth century, though some of them relate to personages of an earlier time.
These have most fortunately been brought within reach of study in the valuable facsimile reproductions in the work by Mr. St. John Hope, which includes in its scope the plates which were executed down to nearly the end of the fifteenth century. As examples of heraldic composition they are invaluable, for although the deterioration of the Gothic was already begun, they possess to a remarkable extent those decorative qualities that their modern successors so unfortunately lack.
Enamel itself consists of a rather dense glass coloured with metallic oxides, and must not be confused with the enamel colours which are employed in painting on porcelain. The latter are vitrifiable but not vitrified material; that is to say, in them the metallic colours in powder are mixed with powdered glass, and the whole becomes fluxed together when the work is fired in the kiln or muffle, while in true enamel the glass and its colouring are intimately combined from the first. By way of definition it may be said that enamel work is therefore an arrangement of one or more layers of coloured glass on fused metal.
In Champlevé work the design is first outlined on a metal plate, usually copper, and then, by means of gravers and chisel-like tools called scorpers, the space which is to receive the enamel is cut out to the necessary depth, from ¹⁄₃₂ to ¹⁄₂₀ of an inch, the rather rough surface that is left by the scorper serving as an additional key to the enamel (see Fig. 173), which having been ground to a powder and moistened with water, is then placed in the cavities prepared for it, and, after being carefully dried, is put into a muffle raised to a red heat, and thus fired until the enamel is fluxed. The work is then allowed to cool, is smoothed and polished, and the metal parts may then be gilt. Champlevé is usually executed in opaque enamel; that is, in glass made opaque by an admixture of oxide of tin.
In very early specimens two or more colours are found in contact in one space, but this is extremely difficult to do, and the resulting line is a somewhat ragged one in European work, though wonderful effects of opaque colours are produced by the Japanese. Since the thirteenth century each colour, in Western work, fills its own space.