It is probable that the Rhenish Provinces of Germany were the first places where Champlevé enamels were extensively made; but almost simultaneously in the twelfth century there arose an active centre of work in this method in Limoges, the future great seat of the enamel industry.
Fig. 95—Byzantine Reliquary, Cloisonné Enamel; Tenth Century.
The German variety may be distinguished from the French by the greater number of colours employed: there is a difficulty in deciding which of the two is the earlier.
The Abbé Suger, when building the Abbey of St. Denis, brought enamellers from Loraine, near the Rhine, to make an enamelled cross, which they completed between 1143 and 1147. A portable altar, and a cruciform reliquary with a dome, in the treasury at Hanover, are early examples of the German school. One of these portable altars in enamel, of the German school, thirteenth century, is shown at Fig. 98. The earliest Champlevé enamel of the Limoges school is that of the monument to Geoffrey Plantagenet, who died in 1151. It is now in the Museum of Le Mans (Fig. 97).
Fig. 96.—Crown of Charlemagne.
Fig. 97.—Champlevé Enamel of Geoffrey Plantagenet.
At Limoges towards the end of the twelfth century Champlevé enamels were made in great numbers. Two specimens of this date are in the Cluny Museum in Paris: one has the subject of the adoration of the Magi, and the other St. Stephen with St. Nicholas, both having Limousin legends. In the same museum are Champlevé enamels as book-covers of the Gospels, croziers, plaques, and “gemellions.” The latter is the name given to certain hand-basins used for religious purposes. In the Louvre is an example of Champlevé enamel—a ciborium of the fourteenth century. This is a vessel in which the Host is kept. Another vessel used for similar purposes is the pyx. Both are small round boxes in which the sacred wafers were kept, and were used for carrying the sacrament to the sick. Ciboria were also in the forms of doves or little towers suspended over the altar. They were kept in little cupboards on either side of the altar, and at later periods the name “ciborium” was applied to the tabernacles having architectural pretensions erected over the altar, and which had a canopy or curtain used as a covering. These tabernacles became shrines of great size and beauty in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and were carved in wood as that in Nuremberg by Adam Kraft, or were stone erections of great dimensions with sculptured figures as decorations, the doors of which were often made in gold and enamelled. Fig. 423 (previous volume) is an example of a fifteenth-century tabernacle with a gilt metal door.