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THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Mrs. David Atkins 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 Microsoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/enamellingcomparOOdaylrich 
 

 ENAMELLING. 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 WINDOWS: A BOOK ABOUT STAINED 
 AND PAINTED GLASS. 
 
 NATURE IN ORNAMENT. 
 
 ART IN NEEDLEWORK: A BOOK 
 ABOUT EMBROIDERY. 
 
 Third Edition. 
 
 ALPHABETS OLD AND NEW. 
 
 Second Edition. 
 
 LETTERING IN ORNAMENT. 
 
 PATTERN DESIGN. 
 
 ORNAMENT AND ITS APPLICATION. 
 
 MOOT POINTS: FRIENDLY DIS- 
 PUTES UPON ART AND INDUSTRY. 
 In conjunction with Walter Crane. 
 
THE COURSE OF ART AND WORKMANSHIP 
 
 ENAMELLING 
 
 A COMPARATIVE ACCOUNT OF THE 
 DEVELOPMENT AND PRACTICE OF THE 
 
 ART 
 
 BY 
 
 LEWIS F. DAY 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 ' WINDOWS,' 'art in needlework,' 
 ' NATURE IN ornament,' ETC., ETC. 
 
 WITH 115 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 LONDON 
 B. T. BATSFORD, 94 HIGH HOLBORN 
 
 1907 
 
^DBURY, AGNKVV, & CO. LD., PRINTERS, 
 LONDON AND TONBRIDGE. 
 
 GIFT 
 
■/ I'/irgri,!',., 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 This is not a book for the learned, but for artists, 
 craftsmen, students, and lovers of enamelling. As 
 to the history of the subject, I know enough to 
 assume no personal authority upon dates and deriva- 
 tions. All I have set myself to do, so far as they 
 are concerned, is to put into handy, readable, 
 and easily intelligible shape the gist of what I have 
 learnt from Kondakow, Von Falke, Franks, Labarte, 
 and other learned but less helpful specialists. As to the 
 practice of the art, I may claim a closer acquaintance 
 with technique, with vitreous colour,* and especially 
 with design, than belongs to the usual equipment of 
 the scholar ; and I have tried, not so much to map 
 out with impossible precision the direct but in any 
 case very problematical development of enamelling, as 
 to find out precisely where we are, to take, as it were, 
 stock of past accomplishment, with a view always to 
 fresh enterprise in art and workmanship. None but a 
 rather dense or a very self-satisfied devotee of modernity 
 can help seeing the need of some such preliminary to 
 original work. 
 
 * On the chemistry of the subject I have had the invaluable 
 assistance of my friend Mr. William Burton, F.C.S., than whom 
 there is no better authority. 
 
 411 
 
VI 
 
 What further it is possible to do, what new forms of 
 beauty the near future may bring to birth, remains for 
 each of us in his generation to show. But no man 
 ever did a thing the worse for knowing how others did 
 it before him. A new departure is best made from the 
 point of view which gives a glance round at the ground 
 already covered. The well-marked paths behind point 
 to the less certain path before. A portion at least of the 
 experience of others before him is the natural inheritance 
 of every workman, and he is none the poorer when he 
 comes into it. Some knowledge of what is outside his own 
 experience goes to the expression of an artist's very self. 
 
 We live in days when comparative study is made 
 easier than ever it used to be. Time, after separating 
 out for us the good work of the past, has drifted it into 
 museums. There we can not only see it as w^e could 
 scarcely do in the church treasuries where much of it 
 was long piously preserved from view, but have the 
 opportunity of comparing the best with the best, each 
 piece with others of its kind. A serious student has 
 only to apply to the museum authorities, and they will 
 allow him, of their courtesy, to examine whatever he 
 is interested in as closely as need be. 
 
 The very scope, however, of the great museums is a 
 source of confusion and perplexity to the student. 
 They contain so much — some of historical, some of 
 artistic, some of purely technical interest ! How is a 
 beginner to know what to look at, and what to look 
 for in it ? 
 
 I have tried to write a book which shall smooth his 
 way to understanding, to point out what has been 
 
Vll 
 
 done, to say when and where it was done, and as far 
 as possible to explain how it was done and why it 
 was done so. 
 
 The reader must not expect to learn in these chapters 
 how to do it. To that there must go also something 
 only to be acquired in the workshop. Besides, I am 
 not an enameller. What I offer him is an introduction 
 to the master- workmen who have given enamel the 
 value it has in our eyes, and a passport to the enjoy- 
 ment and the intelligent use of the museums in which 
 it is stored up. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. What Enamel is 
 
 HISTORY AND SURMISE: WHAT 
 WE KNOW OR THINK WE KNOW 
 
 II. Ancient Enamel .... 
 
 III. Roman, Celtic, and Barbarian Enamel 
 
 IV. Byzantine Enamel .... 
 V. Gothic Enamel 
 
 VI. Barbarian Enamel . . . . 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I 
 
 6 
 i6 
 28 
 37 
 49 
 
 JEWELLER'S ENAMEL, TECHNICALLY 
 AND ARTISTICALLY CONSIDERED. 
 
 VII. Encloisoned Stones and Glass, and Imit 
 tion Jewels . 
 
 VIII. Cloisonne .... 
 
 IX. Champleve .... 
 
 X. Champleve and Cloisonne 
 
 XI. Repousse .... 
 
 XII. Basse Taille 
 
 XIII. Wire Enamel (Unpolished) 
 
 XIV. Painted Cloisonne 
 XV. " Plique a Jour " 
 
 XVI. Incrusted Enamel 
 XVII. Blended Colours 
 XVIII. Enamel "En Resille " 
 
 55 
 61 
 67 
 82 
 91 
 
 lOI 
 
 108 
 122 
 129 
 
 133 
 140 
 147 
 
X 
 
 PAINTER'S ENAMEL, HISTORICALLY 
 AND ARTISTICALLY CONSIDERED. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 XIX. Painting in Translucent Colours . . 151 
 
 XX. Venetian Enamel 161 
 
 XXI. Painting in Grisaille 167 
 
 XXII. Tinted Grisaille 177 
 
 XXIII. Painting in "On-Enamel" Colour . . 185 
 
 ENAMEL COLOUR, HISTORICALLY 
 AND CHEMICALLY CONSIDERED. 
 
 XXIV. The Palette of the Enameller . . . 193 
 XXV. Changes in the Palette 201 
 
 XXVI. The Metal and the Palette .... 210 
 
DESCRIPTIVE LIST OF 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 B. M. = British Museum. V. & A, M.= Victotia and Albert Museum. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1. Goldsmiths' Work, Cloisonne, and inlaid with 
 
 lapis, sardonyx, etc., cemented into the cells. 
 Pectoral of Rameses II., found at Serapium. 
 Louvre . . . - 7 
 
 2. Wooden Figure, Champleve, evidently to be inlaid 
 
 with stones, glass, or something which could not in 
 any case have been fused into the wooden matrix. 
 Egyptian. Kunst Historisches Museum, Vienna - g 
 
 Note. — A similar figure in the Louvre has inlay 
 of lapis, turquoise, carnelian, etc., still embedded 
 in it. 
 
 3. Fragment of Coloured Earthenware, Champleve, 
 
 and inlaid. Square tesserae of hard vitrified paste 
 have been pressed into the plastic clay. Found at 
 Tel-el- Yahoudieh. K. H. M., Vienna - - - 11 
 Note. — There are similar fragments in the B. M. 
 and at the Louvre. 
 
 4. Engraved Soapstone, glazed with turquoise enamel 
 
 and inlaid with vitreous or other hard coloured 
 pastes. Egyptian. B. M. 12 
 
 5. Portion of a Gold Necklace, with touches of pale 
 
 blue and green enamel in the petals of the flowers, 
 etc. Found at Kertch. Greek. From " Les 
 Bijoux," by Eugene Fontenay 13 
 
 6. Red Enamel or Glass, into which a bronze swastica- 
 
 shaped ornament has been embedded. It is one of 
 a series of studs ornamenting a Celtic shield found 
 in the Thames at Battersea. B. M. - . . 16 
 
 7. Bronze Ornaments, Champleve, found at Polden 
 
xu 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Hill and Norton, in Suffolk. Colours opaque 
 yellow and red, the red in a state of decay. 
 Possibly first or second century a.d. - - - 17 
 
 8. Bronze Disc, Champleve, the enamel colour green 
 
 and red (blended). Celtic, ad. 450 — 600. V. & 
 
 A. M. 18 
 
 9. Bronze Flask, Champleve. Blue, orange, yellow, 
 
 and red enamel, the red almost perished. Perhaps 
 fourth century a.d. Found at Pinguente (Istria). 
 K. H. M., Vienna 19 
 
 10. Bronze, Champleve. Red (vertical lines), dark red 
 
 (black with white specks), pale greenish, decayed 
 (white paper), yellow (horizontal lines). The dotted 
 white represents grey-green bronze. Romanesque. 
 V. & A. M. - - 20 
 
 11. Silver Fibula, Champleve. Colours: lemon, dark 
 
 green, lapis blue. Late Roman. K. H. M., Vienna - 21 
 Note. — There is a precisely similar design in red, 
 orange, and green, at the V. & A. M. 
 
 12. Bronze Fibula, Champleve. Red and blue enamel 
 
 in outer border are scarcely distinguishable. The 
 divisions of the inner border are alternately red 
 (very much decayed) and checquers of blue and 
 white. These may be either enamel or sections of 
 fused-glass rods. Gallo-Roman or Merovingian. 
 Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris 22 
 
 [3. Bronze Ornament, Champleve, with inlays of glass 
 fused together : A, grey-blue and white tesserae on 
 red ; B, blue with slight tessera-shaped depressions; 
 C, white flower, with red ring round the eye, on 
 blue of middle tint ; D, in the lower half, blue 
 flowers with white eye ringed with red, on white 
 ground ; in the upper half, blue pattern on a white 
 ground. Romano-British or Gallo-Roman. V. & 
 
 A. M 23 
 
 Note.— The very same patterns occur in another 
 stud in the museum at Rouen. 
 
 14. Bronze Ornament, Cloisonne. Lattice pattern 
 lapis blue and white; checquer pattern pale 
 
XIU 
 
 PAGE 
 
 yellow-green, and dark green. Lines and six- 
 cornered panels in decayed red and lemon yellow. 
 Irish, seventh or eighth century. Formerly at the 
 college of St. Columba, Rathfarnham, now in the 
 Dublin Museum 25 
 
 15. Bronze Ring, Cloisonne. The panels marked A 
 
 are filled with millefiori glass, as shown in the 
 enlargement within the ring. In the glass itself 
 you can see the drag of the pattern, which often 
 occurs in the drawing out of glass rods to reduce 
 the design to a minute scale. The panels marked 
 B and the stiles marked C contain a soft, yellow, 
 brown, mudlike composition, which may have been 
 either enamel or some substitute for it. Gallo- Roman 
 or Romano-British. V. & A. M. - - - - 26 
 
 16. Silver Fibula, with inlaid, riveted plaques of 
 
 punched gold foil. Merovingian. Germanic Mu- 
 seum, Nuremberg - - - - - - - 27 
 
 Note. — Very similar, but more ornate, fibulae in 
 the museum at Arras have filigree ornament and 
 upstanding jewels set in them. 
 
 17. The "Iron Crown of Lombardy," Cloisonne. 
 
 Opaque blue and white on a translucent green 
 ground ; some red also, which looks as if it might be 
 "restoration." A votive Lombardic or B3'zantine 
 crown, probably of the ninth century. Now in the 
 cathedral at Monza - 29 
 
 18. BooK-covER. The cross and medallions are in cloi- 
 
 sonne enamel. Translucent violet, dark blue and 
 red, and white, on a translucent emerald green 
 ground. The border is of inlaid stones or glass, 
 green, garnet red and dark blue, apparently the 
 work of goldsmiths not themselves enamellers. 
 Byzantine. Circa seventh century. In the library 
 of the Doge's Palace, Venice 30 
 
 19. SiLVER-GiLT Reliquary, Cloisonne. Various 
 
 colours, some of them opaque, on a translucent 
 emerald green ground. Byzantine. Tenth century 
 Pierpont Morgan collection 31 
 
XIV 
 
 PAGE 
 
 20. Velvet Bag, sewn over with plaques of silver-gilt, in 
 
 which are mounted heart-shaped and other green 
 and garnet-red jewels or imitation jewels. Pearls 
 and gold and silver cord make up the rest of the 
 pattern. Germanic Museum, Nuremberg - - 33 
 
 21. Cap or " Crown " of Constance of Sicily, on to 
 
 which are sewn cloisonne enamel plaques and jewels. 
 Light and dark blue, green, and sealing-wax red. 
 Twelfth century. Palermo ----- 34 
 
 22. Enamelled Book-cover, Cloisonne. Translucent 
 
 blue and green, opaque lemon yellow and white, 
 grey-blue neither quite translucent nor quite 
 opaque. German- Byzantine, V. & A. M. - - 35 
 
 23. Semicircular Plaque, Champleve. Busts of the 
 
 Virtues in medallions. Ground to scrollwork 
 lapis blue. Medallions white, yellow, green, and 
 dark red. Rhenish. Twelfth century - - - 37 
 
 24. Foot of an Altar Cross, Champleve. Lapis 
 
 (black), green (dark dotted), yellow (lines), very 
 pale blue or white (dotted), on a gilt metal ground. 
 German. Godfrey de Claire, Huy on the Maas. 
 Circa 116s. V. & A. M. 38 
 
 25. Panel of the "Alton Towers," Triptych, 
 
 Champlevi^. Dark blue, green, red, turquoise, and 
 light grey-blue. German, from the workshop of 
 Godfrey de Claire, Huy on the Maas. Middle of 
 twelfth century. V. &A. M. 39 
 
 26. Enamelled Book-cover, Champleve. Three shades 
 
 of lapis, turquoise, green, yellow, white, and dark 
 red. The figure of Christ and the heads of the 
 other figures are cast and applied. Limoges. 
 Thirteenth century 41 
 
 27. Copper-gilt Pyx, Champleve. Dark red, lapis 
 
 blue, and turquoise. The ground of the shields 
 and the pattern between them is " reserved " in 
 the metal and gilt. Limoges. Thirteenth century - 42 
 
 28. Plaque from the Base of a Cross, Champlev6. 
 
 Lapis, light blue, turquoise, green, dark red, and white, 
 
 on copper gilt. Limoges. Early thirteenth century. 43 
 
XV 
 
 PAGE 
 
 29. Enamelled Plaque, partly champlevd, partly cloi- 
 
 sonne. Italian. Eleventh century. B. M. - - 44 
 
 30. Copper-gilt Reliquary, Champleve. Figures 
 
 reserved and chased, heads applied. Ground of 
 upper subject grey-blue, of lower one deep lapis, 
 with cross bands of green. Limoges. Thirteenth 
 century - 45 
 
 31. Bronze Effigy of Archbishop Maurice, with 
 
 plaques of champleve enamel on the mitre, stole, 
 cushion, etc. The figure is in wood overlaid with • 
 sheets of bronze once gilt. Enamel colours, 
 white, turquoise, cobalt, and points of sealing-wax 
 red. The flesh is painted in colour which is not 
 vitreous. The robe is diapered with engraving. 
 After 1238. Burgos Cathedral . ... 47 
 
 32. Pierced Chalice-holder. Gold or silver-gilt wire 
 
 with translucent green and purple and opaque 
 green enamel, on which colours are dots of white 
 enamel. Russian. Seventeenth century. N. M., 
 
 Buda-Pesth 51 
 
 ^^. Portion of a Fretted Plaque, cloisonnd enamel, 
 
 copper gilt. Chinese. V. & A. M. - - - - 53 
 
 34. Cloisonn6 Jewellery. Gold, inlaid with red and 
 
 green glass. Ostrogothic. Ravenna Museum - 55 
 
 Note. — There is a very similar jewel at the Cluny. 
 
 35. CoppER-GiLT Crucifix, Champleve Enamel, jewelled. 
 
 French. Thirteenth century. Pierpont Morgan 
 collection --------- 57 
 
 36. Bronze Disc, Champleve. Apparently blue enamel 
 
 in the form of little glass tesserae. About full 
 size. Found at Lisieux. Now in the museum 
 at Rouen 59 
 
 37. Gold Plaque, with figure of archangel Michael, 
 
 cloisonne. Byzantine. Typical thirteenth century 
 work. The colour, as it were, "shot" with gold. 
 Kloster Dshumati Ghurian. From Kondakow - 63 
 
 38. Landscape Panel, Cloisonne. .The cloisons used 
 
 not only to enclose colour, but to give drawing 
 upon it. Sea and clouds all white. Colours, blue, 
 
XVI 
 
 PAGE 
 
 green, turquoise, lemon yellow, and a sort of 
 yellowish drab ; pale tints blended. Chinese. 
 Latter part of eighteenth century. V. & A. M. - 64 
 
 39. Crucifix, Bronze, about 10 in. high. Champleve. 
 
 Cross, green with bronze. ornament ; borderline and 
 " I.H.S.," dark blue; flesh, pink; hair and loin cloth, 
 darkish blue ; lips and cross on nimbus, red. 
 Germanic Museum, Nuremberg . . - . 69 
 Note. — In the British Museum there is a twelfth 
 century Limoges crucifix which reminds one of 
 this ; but the head is flesh colour and the body 
 white ; this looks as if the enamel had changed 
 colour, i.e., as if the head had gone darker. 
 
 40. Copper "Gemellion," Champleve. Figures, etc., 
 
 reserved in the metal. Limoges. Thirteenth 
 century. Cluny Museum 70 
 
 41. Front of a Casket, Champlev£:. Figures chased, 
 
 heads applied. Colours blended. Limoges. 
 Thirteenth century. Limoges Museum - - - 71 
 
 42. Part of an Altar Front, Champleve, m.easuring 
 
 about 7 ft. 6 in. by 2 ft. 3 in. Cobalt, turquoise, 
 chrome green, yellow green, with a little white and 
 coral red. On gilt bronze, engraved. The heads 
 are raised, the columns, etc., repousse and pierced. 
 At the base were jewels and plaques of enamel set 
 like them : the illustration shows only the wooden 
 substructure where the plaque should be. Twelfth 
 century. Burgos Museum ... - 73 
 
 43. CoppER-GiLT Casket, Champleve. The subject is 
 
 "reserved " in the metal; the background is cobalt 
 blue ; the tessellated border is in red and blue, 
 with blank squares, shown white in the drawing, 
 not enamelled. Limoges. Second half of eleventh 
 century. V. & A. M. 74 
 
 44. Vestment Clasp, or Morse, Champleve. Copper. 
 
 Figures reserved and engraved, the lines filled in 
 with enamel. Red, light green, and black. Limoges. 
 Early fourteenth century ------ 75 
 
 45. Detail of a Reliquary, Champleve. Figures and 
 
XVll 
 
 PAGE 
 
 scroll reserved, on an enamelled ground. Shaded 
 colour in the rather Persian-looking floral terminals. 
 Limoges. Church of Bellac 76 
 
 46. "The Lyte Jewel," enclosing a miniature of James I, 
 
 The front is set with diamonds connected by scroll 
 ornament incrusted, like the fillet, etc., with enamel 
 in white and translucent colour. The back is in 
 white enamel with fine lines of gold, enclosing little 
 stiff-shaped patches of translucent ruby. The border 
 is in imitation of rubies and sapphires. Given by 
 James I. to Thomas Lyte (died 1638). Waddesdon 
 collection, B. M. 77 
 
 47. Helmet, so-called "Cold Enamel," Champleve. 
 
 The strapwork is in black, vermilion, and gilt metal, 
 this last enriched with an etched pattern. Etching 
 has been used also in the background, which shows 
 a gilt pattern on white. The slightly sunk coloured 
 straps are edged with a raised line of silver. Borders 
 and cresting entirely of gilt metal with etched 
 pattern. Part of a suit of armour in the K. H. M., 
 Vienna 80 
 
 48. Detail of Cloisonne Design. Part of a large 
 
 scalloped dish. Typical colours : turquoise ground 
 with ornament in lapis and a little yellow and red. 
 About full size. Chinese. Ming period, say 1450. 
 V. & A. M 83 
 
 49. Detail of Byzantine Cloisonne, slightly enlarged, 
 
 from the book-cover shown in illustration No. 22 - 85 
 
 50. Cloisonne Vase, with applique enrichment. Copper 
 
 gilt. Usual colours on a turquoise ground. Old 
 Chinese. Wan Li period, 1573 —1619. V. & A. M. 87 
 Note. — Compare figures in relief upon Limoges 
 enamel Nos. 26, 35. 
 
 51. Brass Stirrup, Champleve AND Cloisonne. Opaqtie 
 
 white, turquoise, green, yellow, and red, on a prac- 
 tically black ground. The broad lines are champ- 
 leve, the fine ones cloisonne. Hispano-Moresque. 
 Fifteenth century. Pierpont Morgan collection - 89 
 
 52. Silver Plaques, with patterns beaten down and filled 
 E. b 
 
XVIU 
 
 PAGE 
 
 in, but not filled up, with enamel ; the diaper with 
 blue, varying from pale to deep ; the scroll with 
 green, blue, and red. From a Byzantine book-cover 
 of the eleventh century in the Treasury of St. Mark's, 
 Venice 91 
 
 53. The "Demetrius" Tablet. Repousse gold, with 
 
 enamelled "jewels" of lapis blue, green, and white. 
 The flesh has been incrusted with shell-pink, of 
 which only a small piece remains on the neck, 
 although the gold has been tooled over to give tooth 
 to it. Thirteenth century. From the Welfen Schatz 
 in the Gewerbs Museum, Vienna . ... 93 
 
 54. REPOussfe AND Chased Box. Gilt metal. Sunk 
 
 ground enamelled with dark, semi-opaque blue. 
 Chinese. From the Summer Palace at Pekin. 
 V. & A. M 95 
 
 55. Detail of No. 54 95 
 
 56. Embossed and Cloisonne Vase. Colours in the 
 
 petals of the flowers blended : blue to white ; red to 
 white or green ; green to blue, yellow, or another 
 shade of green. The eyes of flowers of a contrasting 
 colour. Enamel not ground down flat. Chinese. 
 Late eighteenth century. V. & A. M. - - - 97 
 
 57. Cast Brass Candlestick, Champlev6. Black, 
 
 white, and green enamel, rather casually intro- 
 duced into the background. English. Seventeenth 
 century 99 
 
 58. Enamelled Gold Ornament. Neither champleve 
 
 nor cloisonne. The pattern seems to have been 
 cut out of a flat sheet of metal and soldered on, so 
 as to produce, together with the enclosing frame- 
 work of wire, shallow cells for the colour. It 
 forms part of the eleventh century reliquary of 
 Pepin of Aquitaine in the church of Conques, 
 but may very well be much earlier than that - 100 
 
 59. Bowl of a Silver-gilt Chalice, Champleve. In- 
 
 scription in silver on translucent blue ground. Main 
 design reserved on a translucent green ground, with 
 touches of red and blue in the trefoils. On it are the 
 
XIX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 arms of Don Pedro Nunez de Lara, Count of Majorca 
 
 in 1381. Hispano-Flemish. Louvre - - - 102 
 
 60. Jewelled Knife Handle. Silver-gilt top with rubies. 
 
 Pale opaque blue leaf-shapes with gold markings 
 upon them, gilt flowers on dark translucent green 
 ground, to which the chasing underneath gives 
 sparkle. Indian. Pierpont Morgan collection - 103 
 
 61. Gold Miniature Case, with translucent champleve 
 
 enamel. German. Probably Augsburg work. 
 Seventeenth century. Pierpont Morgan collection - 105 
 
 62. Silver Casket. Pattern-work in cloisonne enamel 
 
 (the cells not filled up) with pierced ground showing 
 the gilt metal with which it is backed. Translucent 
 cobalt, green, turquoise, and yellow ; opaque green, 
 Naples yellow, and black. German. Seventeenth 
 
 century. V. & A. M. 109 
 
 Note. — See No. 70 for enlarged detail. 
 
 63. Disc OF CLOisoNNfe Enamel. The cells formed by 
 
 the cloisons have been only once filled with enamel. 
 This shows, in fact, only the first stage in the process 
 of enamelling. But, as it is on the under-side of the 
 vessel, it may not have been meant, in this case, to 
 be carried further. Old Japanese. From Bowes - no 
 
 64. Detail of Wire Enamel. Part of a book-cover. 
 
 Opaque turquoise, green, Naples yellow, and black, 
 on white ground. There are spots of white on the 
 black. Russian. Seventeenth century. V. & A. M. - in 
 
 65. Silver Tankard, with pierced ground. Enamel not 
 
 flush with the cloisons. Translucent green and 
 opaque white, the latter traced with red. National 
 Museum, Buda-Pesth - 112 
 
 66. Silver Case, with pattern of twisted wire, the ground 
 
 filled in with white and opaque-coloured enamel. 
 Russian. V. & A. M. 113 
 
 67. Enlarged Detail of No. 66 114 
 
 68. Detail of the foot of a silver-gilt chalice, the outline 
 
 of the design in wire, twisted and plain. The 
 tendrils are in coils of wire standing up in round 
 relief. Leaves and grapes are in translucent copper 
 
XX 
 
 green on a manganese purple ground. Hungarian. 
 Sixteenth century. Pierpont Morgan collection - 115 
 6g. Parts of a Chain. Pierced cloisonne on silver over 
 plates of silver-gilt. Translucent green, opaque 
 turquoise, and (in the flowers) white traced with red 117 
 
 70. Enlarged Detail of No. 62, showing small leaves, not 
 
 enamelled, and discs of metal at the junctions of the 
 wire, all of which strengthen the network of enamel - 119 
 
 71. Filigree Ornament in silver v/ire on gilt. Manganese, 
 
 pale blue, and coral-coloured dots. The eyes of the 
 flowers are jewelled. N. M., Buda-Pesth - - 120 
 
 72. Silver-gilt Buckle. Open cloisonne in silver wire, 
 
 mounted on a gilt ground, leafage in translucent 
 blue and green and opaque turquoise, flowers in 
 opaque white traced over with red or blue and 
 shaded with yellow. Buda-Pesth . . . . 122 
 
 73. Part of a Parure in Silver Filigree. Wire 
 
 enamel, with painting in colour on tiie white 
 enamelled flowers. Hungarian - - - - 123 
 
 74. Part of a Silver Clasp. Wire enamel, painted. 
 
 Gewerbs Museum, BudarPesth . . . . 124 
 
 75. Details of Jewellery, the white enamel painted 
 
 with black or red. N. M., Buda-Pesth - - - 125 
 Note. — Compare with No. 82. 
 
 76. Portions of a Copper-gilt Pipe. In the larger 
 
 detail dotted parts stand for the metal, white for 
 white enamel, horizontal lines for opaque turquoise. 
 The white flowers are traced with blue and red. ' 
 The metal outlines to these, as well as the stems 
 and leaves, are got by chasing. Persian. Nine- 
 teenth century. V. & A. M. 127 
 
 77. Silver-gilt Goblet, with decoration in " plique a 
 
 jour" enamel. The body of the cup is delicately 
 engraved with pattern-work not shown in the 
 drawing. Burgundian. Probably early fifteenth 
 century. V. & A. M. 130 
 
 78. Detail of No. 77. " Plique a jour." Pale green 
 
 (dotted), amber yellow (lines), sapphire blue (cross 
 hatching), and crystal clear enamel .... 131 
 
XXI 
 
 PACK 
 
 79. Jewelled Ornament for the Hair. Incrusted 
 
 enamel. White flower with rubies inset, translu- 
 cent green leaves. Hungarian. N. M., Buda- _^ 
 Pesth - 133 -_ 
 
 80. Enlarged Detail of silver-gilt pendent frame. 
 
 Flowers incrusted alternately with opaque white and 
 translucent ruby ; no enamel on the leaves, etc. 
 Fifteenth century. Pierpont Morgan collection - 134 
 
 81. Filigree Chain. Flat links silver, raised links gilt. 
 
 Flowers, etc., encrusted with opaque yellow, pale 
 blue, white and translucent green and manganese. 
 N. M., Buda-Pesth 135 
 
 82. Details of Enamelled Jewellery. N. M., Buda- 
 
 Pesth 137 
 
 Note. — Compare with No, 68. 
 
 83. Silver Vase. The ornament in relief and partially 
 
 encrusted with translucent and white enamel, the 
 white shaded with glaze colour. Japanese. Nine- 
 teenth century 1 38 
 
 84. Enamelled Grave Plate of Geoffrey Plantagenet 
 
 Champleve. It measures about 2 ft. by i foot, 
 and is said to be the largest as well as the 
 earliest known piece of Limoges work. In the 
 illustration the relation of the colours has been dis- 
 turbed by photography. The lapis blue ground of 
 the shield should show darkest of all, and darker 
 than the " reserved " lions upon it ; next in intensity 
 should come the green drapery, then the grey blue 
 on the heraldic lining of the cloak, and lightest of all 
 should be the paler grey under-garment. The flesh 
 is of a pale, blurred, purplish tint, the eyes white with 
 blue pupils. In the background diaper the trellis is 
 blue-green ; the fleurs-de-lis are alternately blue and 
 white upon a " reserved" ground; the bands, etc., 
 with engraved cross-hatching, are also " reserved " 
 metal. After 1151. Now in the museum at Le 
 
 Mans 141 
 
 35. Part of a Casket, copper gilt, with arms of England, 
 Angouleme, Valence, I^arl of Pembroke, and Dreux, 
 
xxu 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Duke of Brittany and Brabant. Red, blue, white, 
 and black. The red of the dark lion is speckled 
 with blue. Limoges. Late thirteenth century. 
 V. &A. M - 143 
 
 86. Plaque with Shaded Colour, Champleve. German 
 
 (Godfrey de Claire). Twelfth century. B. M. - 145 
 
 87. Enamel on Glass' Paste (" Email en resille "). In the 
 
 style of Etienne de Laune. French. Sixteenth 
 century. B. M. 147 
 
 88. Enlarged Detail of No. 87. White, mauve, deep red, 
 
 green, and blue. Gold outline. French. Sixteenth 
 century. B. M. - 149 
 
 89. Detail of the Entombment, from the Centre 
 
 Panel of a Triptych. Painted enamel, in trans- 
 lucent colours and gold, by Nardon Penicaud. 
 Circa 1500. Pierpont Morgan collection - - 155 
 
 90. Plaque painted in translucent enamels, after Etienne 
 
 de Laune. Limoges. Sixteenth century - - 157 
 
 91. Oval Mirror Frame. Venus and Cupid. Painted 
 
 in translucent colour, partly over foil, and height- 
 ened with gold. Flesh opaque white. The rock 
 and figures against it are in embossed relief. Land- 
 scape translucent green, sky pale blue, flowers 
 ruby and sapphire over foil. Jean de Cour or 
 Courteys. Second half of sixteenth century. 
 Pierpont Morgan collection - - - - - 159 
 
 92. Circular Dish enamelled in translucent colours and 
 
 opaque white, with pattern on the enamel painted in 
 gold, enclosing little jewels of opaque turquoise and 
 coral red. Venetian. Fifteenth or sixteenth century 161 
 
 93. Beaker enamelled in translucent colours and opaque 
 
 white. The drawing upon the white enamel is black, 
 " poinctille." Crescents, stars, etc., of gold foil are 
 pressed into the translucent colour. " Burgundian." 
 Fifteenth century. K. H. M., Vienna - - - 162 
 
 94. SiLVER-GiLT Beaker in grisaille and gold on a black 
 
 ground. Flemish. Fifteenth century. Pierpont 
 Morgan collection - - - , . r - 163 
 Note. — The foot is modern. 
 
XXlll 
 
 PAGE 
 
 95. Silver-gilt Spoon enamelled in purple white and 
 
 green, with leaves, etc., in foil, cut to shape, modelled, 
 and embedded in the enamel. German. Fifteenth 
 century. V. & A. M. 164 
 
 96. Detail of No. 95 165 
 
 97. Salt-cellar. The history of Hercules, Painted in 
 
 grisaille with touches of gold. Pierre Reymond. 
 Limoges. Sixteenth century - - - - - 167 
 
 98. Enamelled Medallion. Portrait of Andrea Doria, 
 
 the outlines evidently scratched through the white 
 down to the black enamel ground. Blue beard, 
 yellowish brown drapery, brown cap dotted with 
 gold, gilt lettering, etc. Limoges. Sixteenth 
 century. V. & A. M. - - - - - - 169 
 
 99. Grisaille. Tinted flesh, some gold. Pierre Courteys. 
 
 Limoges. Sixteenth century 170 
 
 100. Ewer in Grisaille, glazed in parts with blue, 
 green, and violet, and touched with gold. Conty 
 
 Nouailher. Limoges 171 
 
 loi. " Neptune riding the Waves." Large plaque 
 chiefly in blues, with warm red in the flesh, and 
 some gold. The painter seems to have painted 
 white over blue, and to have glazed that again with 
 blue. In the chariot the ground colour of the metal 
 shows through a transparent yellowish flux. Leonard 
 Limousin, after Marc Antonio. Waddesdon collec- 
 tion, 13. M. 173 
 
 102. Part of a Candlestick painted in grisaille. 
 
 Limoges. Seventeenth century. V. & A. M. - 175 
 
 103. Cupid and Psyche. Small plaque; figures painted 
 
 first in white, and upon that with pale colours for the 
 modelling : cobalt blue, turquoise, manganese purple, 
 brown, grey, and lemon yellow. The curtain is 
 glazed with translucent green. Leonard Limousin, 
 after Raffaelle. Circa 1540. V. & A. M. - - 177 
 
 104. Plaque. Figures painted in grisaille on dark blue 
 
 ground and tinted with greenish turquoise. Land- 
 scape and foliage are in translucent green. Jean 
 Penicaud II. (figures taken from Marc Antonio and 
 
XXIV 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Raffaelle). Limoges. 1500 to 1550. Salting 
 collection 179 
 
 105. Francois I. as S. Simon. Plaque of large size, 
 painted with extraordinary directness. Ground 
 white ; drapery modelled in colours ; under-drapery 
 almost entirely in gold on brown ; flesh a pinkish, 
 liquid-looking glaze over delicate grisaille. One of a 
 series of the twelve Apostles, from the Chateau 
 d'Anet, by Leonard Limousin, signed and dated 
 1547. Now in the church of S. Pierre atChartres - 181 
 
 106. Painted Enamel. The cupid in grisaille on a ground 
 
 of translucent green. Border sapphire blue, with 
 shells painted in white and glazed with translucent 
 colour (turquoise and manganese purple), into which 
 again are painted touches of white. Scrollwork in 
 gold. Italian ? Fitz Henry collection - - - 182 
 
 107. Portrait of Jacques Gallot de Genouilhac. 
 
 Ground deep blue, flesh warm red, velvet coat and 
 cap black. Leonard Limousin. Circa 1540. V. 
 & A. M 183 
 
 108. Canton Enamel. Brass saucer, coated with white 
 
 and painted after the style of the " famille rose " 
 porcelain. Flowers rose and blue, leaves green, 
 border blue and white, band on the inside of border 
 yellow. Chinese. Circa 1700. V. & A. M. - - i8g 
 
 109. Canton Enamel. Copper saucer, coated with white 
 
 and painted after the style of lacquer work. Design 
 in dark brown with tracing in gold upon it. Chinese. 
 
 Nineteenth century. V. & A. M 191 
 
 no. Enamelled Pipe-holder. Copper, coated with a 
 deep rich blue, upon which are little raised blots of 
 enamel in imitation of coral and turquoises. The 
 grey tint represents gilding on the enamel. Modern 
 Persian. V. & A. M. 201 
 
 111. Gold Chain, Champleve, enamelled black and 
 
 white. N. M., Buda-^Pesth 202 
 
 112. Bronze Plaque in the form of an Altar. Dark 
 
 blue and green fairly well preserved, sealing- 
 wax red much decomposed, and (in the empty 
 
XXV 
 
 PAGE 
 
 cavities) a pale greenish colour which may be 
 remains of turquoise or other enamel. Romano- 
 British. Early Christian era. Found in the Thames. 
 B. M. 204 
 
 113. Onyx Vessel (the lower half of it serves also as a 
 
 separate basin) set in jewelled and enamelled gold- 
 smith's work. In the two broad bands rubies and 
 emeralds are framed in white strapwork and gold 
 filigree on black. In the handle, knob, etc. (where 
 there are no jewels), opaque turquoise, pale cobalt 
 and yellow, as well as translucent green and blue, 
 are used. French or Italian. Sixteenth century. 
 K. H. M., Vienna 208 
 
 114. Silver Butterfly Ornament, Cloisonne, in 
 
 opaque yellow, red, and white, together with 
 turquoise, cobalt blue and green, which are 
 relatively translucent. Chinese. V. & A. M. - 212 
 
 E. 
 
I. WHAT ENAMEL IS. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 Popularly speaking, any hard, glassy outer coating 
 is enamel. We speak of the enamel of the teeth, and 
 in so doing can hardly be said to use language loosely. 
 In the commercial sense, a paint which gives a smooth 
 and glossy surface — it may be to the wall of a room, it 
 may be to a complexion the reverse of smooth — goes by 
 the name of enamel. Technically, enamel is a coating of 
 colour fused on to glass, pottery, metal, or whatever 
 mineral substance will stand heat enough to fuse it. 
 The colour upon glass or glazed earthenware is also, 
 no doubt, in the strictest sense, '* enamel," because it 
 is vitreous, and burnt on ; and the phrase " enamel 
 colour " is expressly employed to indicate colour that 
 is not in the glaze or under the glaze, but annealed to 
 its surface. There is, logically, no reason why a piece 
 of enamelled glass or porcelain should not be called an 
 enamel ; but, as it happens, enamel with what used to 
 be called the "indefinite article " before it, has come 
 to be used in a limited sense. An enamel is now 
 generally understood to mean enamel upon metal. 
 
 That is the subject here under discussion — vitreous 
 colour fused to gold, silver, copper, brass, iron, or 
 whatever the metal may be. Enamel is really glass 
 upon metal. It is not merely glassy colour, but 
 coloured glass ; and that is why there is nothing to 
 compare with it for gorgeousness except stained glass, 
 
 E, B 
 
2 
 
 glass mosaic, and, of course, jewellery — in deliberate 
 imitation of which coloured glass was first made. 
 
 The antecedent use of glass in place of jewels would 
 of itself be enough to account for the use of vitreous 
 colour in connection with goldsmith's work. That was 
 illuminated at first with precious stones, then with 
 imitations of them in glass, and eventually with enamel. 
 Apart, however, from forgery or imitative intention of 
 any kind, enamel is the metal-worker's way of getting 
 brilliant and varied colour. Damascening, inlaying 
 and incrustation gave him the colour of various metals, 
 gold, silver, copper, brass, tin and so forth ; but 
 beyond that he was dependent upon enamel, which 
 was still in so far metallic that the colour in it was due 
 to a metallic oxide, and congenial, therefore, to what 
 it enriched. 
 
 Enamel is inseparable from glass-working. In it the 
 glass-worker comes to the help of the goldsmith, and 
 gives him colour beyond the range of the available 
 metals, and more easily manageable than the inlay of 
 precious stones, which it is wasteful as well as trouble- 
 some to cut to shape. 
 
 It would be difficult to draw a hard-and-fast line 
 between glass and enamel. As soon as ever the metal- 
 worker found that melted glass would adhere to metal, 
 the art of enamelling, or, if not precisely that, the way 
 to it, was discovered. It is only one remove from 
 glass-working to enamelling, and, as we shall see, some 
 of the earliest enamels may quite possibly have been 
 the doing simply of glass-workers. Later we find that 
 enamellers were often, if not actually engaged in glass- 
 painting, the sons or fathers of glass-painters. 
 
 The birth of enamel is, and must always be, obscure. 
 Who will be so rash as to say that any nation adept at 
 once in metal-work and in the making of glass may 
 
3 
 not, as a matter of fact, have gone the short step 
 further and produced enamel ? All we can take for 
 granted is that, had they done so to any considerable 
 extent, some record or remains of their work would in 
 all likelihood have come down to us. 
 
 Enamel colour consists practically of coloured glass, 
 powdered, mixed up into what is called a '* paste," and, 
 when it is dry, melted on to the metal. The term 
 "paste" seems to have an attraction for writers on 
 enamel. Perhaps it is the false air of learning about 
 it which is so alluring ; but their constant use of it has 
 done something to obscure the simple fact that enamel 
 is only glass. What if it is made up into a paste ? All 
 glass in the viscid, dough-like state in which it is 
 plastic might quite as well be described as paste. 
 
 Powdered glass naturally spreads as it melts. Accord- 
 ingly the jeweller built up little walls of wire to confine 
 it, or beat down troughs for it if it was thin gold he 
 was using. When, later, he worked in thick bronze, 
 he dug them out of the solid. 
 
 All early enamelling being metal-worker's colour, it 
 is only natural that metal — gold, silver, or gilt bronze 
 — should play a part in its design, whether as back- 
 ground, as pattern upon a coloured ground, or as outline 
 between the colours. Nothing is more characteristic 
 of early enamel than the boundary of gold between the 
 colours; and it has a wonderful effect in harmonising 
 tints in themselves bright to the verge of crudity. It 
 is just possible that we have here the source of that 
 systematic separation of colour from colour by inter- 
 vening gold, which was the secret of the very suc- 
 cessful dealing with rather dangerous primaries so 
 characteristic of Moresque colour decoration. 
 
 Early enamel is not only goldsmith's colour, it is 
 characteristic of the goldsmith's craft, and could only 
 
 B 2 
 
4 
 have been done by an adept in it. Enamellers began 
 with small pieces of jewellery, and confined their 
 enamel at first to minute portions of these. So long 
 as they used the blowpipe to fuse it they could not do 
 otherwise. With the use of a furnace of some kind, 
 their facilities increased ; but it was not until the art 
 had made great progress that they could fire vessels of 
 any considerable size, as the Chinese did — although, 
 according to Dr. Bushell, their enamel "was fired in 
 the open courtyard, protected only by a primitive 
 cover of iron network, the charcoal fire being regulated 
 by a number of men standing round with large fans in 
 their hands." They would not have been able to do 
 what they did except by the use of a much softer 
 medium than that of the Byzantine or Gothic 
 enamellers. The fusibility of the enamel is always a 
 very important consideration, determining not only the 
 number of colours that can be fused at one fire, but 
 the size of the pieces it is possible to produce. Only a 
 highly developed craftsmanship will account for very 
 large pieces of enamel free from serious flaws, even 
 though the enamel may be comparatively soft. 
 
 It would be possible to divide enamels arbitrarily 
 into classes : according to the quality of the enamel, 
 translucent or opaque ; according to the method of 
 workmanship adopted in turn by gold or silversmith, 
 bronze-worker and painter ; according to the place 
 and period of its execution. But it would be hopeless 
 to discuss any one such class without reference to the 
 others. On the whole, the simplest and most profit- 
 able proceeding is to follow, as far as possible, the 
 course of evolution : that will lead us by the way to 
 the consideration of the various kinds of enamel, the 
 methods of workmanship employed, and the when 
 and whereabouts of their employment — each of which 
 
5 
 subjects can afterwards be taken separately into 
 consideration. 
 
 Enamelling is properly one of the decorative arts. 
 It is seen at its best in association with jeweller's, 
 goldsmith's and coppersmith's work. Like every other 
 art, it took eventually a pictorial direction ; but the 
 first pictures in enamel (basse taille) were still gold- 
 smith's pictures — engraved or chased in gold, the 
 variation in each colour got, not by painting, but by 
 deeper or shallower sinkings, according to which the 
 translucent colour was made to show darker or lighter 
 at the goldsmith's will. When enamellers learnt how 
 to keep their colour ''still" without banks or beds to 
 hold it, they did without metal boundaries and relied 
 altogether upon painting. 
 
 From the thirteenth century down to our own time 
 enamel-painters have cherished their art as something 
 apart and independent. And very beautiful things 
 have been done in it, from the jewel-rich triptychs of 
 Nardon Penicaud, to the finished portraits of Leonard 
 Limousin, and the exquisite miniatures of Petitot — 
 none of which we could well spare. Nevertheless, it 
 was not the medium in which a painter could most 
 effectually express himself. The enamel-painters of 
 the Renaissance sacrificed to the unattainable the best 
 that was to be got out of enamel. Its possibilities 
 were all in the direction of colour ; and they took to 
 grisaille ! In asserting the independence of their art, 
 they called attention to its shortcomings. 
 
II. ANCIENT ENAMEL. 
 
 EGYPTIAN AND GREEK. 
 
 The concern of all concerned in art is mainly with 
 what enamellers did and how they did it. Bat it is 
 impossible to discuss even that without reference to 
 where and when it was done. Progress in technique 
 was naturally along the lines of civilization. The 
 course of art was very much the course of events ; and 
 some preliminary survey of the field of historic develop- 
 ment is indispensable to right understanding of design 
 and workmanship. 
 
 Traces of enamel are to be found in times remote 
 and in places wide apart. The footprints of the first 
 explorers in the field of enamelling have, however, 
 been trodden over. It is no longer possible to identify 
 them. The enameller has been there sure enough ; 
 but there seems no knowing precisely who he was, 
 whence he came, or where he learnt his trade. We 
 know that here and there enamel has been found ; we 
 may have good grounds for supposing that it was made 
 on the spot ; we may be all but sure it was not made 
 after such or such a period in the world's history ; but 
 how much earlier than that probable date something in 
 the nature of enamel may have been practised here or 
 there, how it came to be done at all, and where it 
 originated — these, for all our science of research and 
 thoroughness of exploration, are questions still, if ever, 
 to be cleared up. 
 
 That does not prevent our forming very definite 
 
^^jjjpafjwmiiifmffifiiflWM 
 
 I. EGYPTIAN CLOISONNE — NOT ENAMEL. 
 
 notions as to the course of craftsmanship. Indeed, 
 every independent investigator seems to form a theory 
 of his own ; and, since no two theories agree, anyone 
 looking at the subject in the light rather of craftsman- 
 ship than of learning is thrown back upon his own 
 discrimination. He has to choose between absolutely 
 contradictory statements made with equal authority. 
 All he can pretend to do is to trace the probable course 
 of events ; and that is all it is here proposed to do. 
 
 It is to be doubted whether the ancient Egyptians 
 got much beyond the threshold of enamelling on metal. 
 Few authorities claim more than that for them. All that 
 is clear is that they used colour which, if not enamel, 
 would have been, if they had known how to get it. The 
 
8 
 vitreous filling of their cloisonne jewellery is inlaid 
 glass, which may or may not have been fused into its 
 cells. You can see quite plainly how, for example, the 
 gradation of colour from red to lapis blue and from 
 lapis to turquoise in the cresting of the pectoral of 
 Ramses II. (page 7) is got by piecing together little 
 bits of glass or stone : the dividing line between two 
 '^pastes" of enamel would be nothing like so sharp as 
 that. Again, where a background is filled in with blue, 
 you can detect the joints between the pieces of inlay. 
 In the famous hawk and in the well-known bracelets 
 in the British Museum quantities of greyish cement 
 remain in the cells where the inlay has fallen out, and 
 what remains does not quite fit the cells. This argues 
 that it was not fused in, and not enamel therefore. 
 
 The examples quoted by those who will have it that 
 the Egyptians did enamel are of comparatively late 
 date, belonging to the Egypto-Roman period. There 
 is to be found, no doubt, in Egyptian jewellery of about 
 the beginning of the Christian era, remains of light blue 
 colour, which certainly fills the cavities — champleve in 
 this case — in a way which inlays of glass or stone do 
 not. (It is significant that blue and white were the 
 colours with which the Greeks incrusted their jewellery.) 
 If we assume that to be enamel, light blue of a more or 
 less turquoise tint would seem to have been for a long 
 while the only enamel the Egyptians had : at all events 
 they used inlay for other colours. This light blue is 
 now in a whitish stage of decomposition. There are 
 other colours, in a powdery condition, still clinging to 
 the cells of Egyptian goldsmith's work ; but there is 
 nothing to show that they were anything more than 
 coloured cement. It is quite certain that the colour 
 in the little wooden figure opposite (none of which 
 remains to tell its story) was not enamel. Vestiges of 
 
2. EGYPTIAN CHAMPLEVE— WOOD. 
 
lO 
 
 colour in ancient work are no proof of enamelling. It 
 would have to be proved that the colour was vitreous 
 and had been fused into its place. 
 
 Why, it has been asked, considering the skill of the 
 ancient Egyptians in glass-making and glass-working, 
 should we not give them the benefit of the doubt, and 
 admit that the wonder would have been if they had not 
 discovered enamelling ? It certainly is strange they 
 did not. But the persistent use of inlay can hardly 
 have been a matter of preference on their part. It is 
 difficult to imagine them continuing, when once they 
 had enamel, to use it only in cases where it was impos- 
 sible to insert lapis or whatever they may have used. 
 The conclusion is that they had at the best a colour or 
 two, not a palette of enamels, and for the rest were 
 dependent upon inlay, whether of stones or glass. 
 
 Curiously enough, in pottery also the Egyptians 
 inlaid little bits of glass which they fused to tlie clay. 
 That is quite plainly seen in the figures from Tel-el- 
 Yehudiyeh in the museum at Vienna (opposite). 
 There are similar fragments of about the same date, 
 ca. 1300 B.C., in the Louvre and in the British Museum, 
 and in quite a number of pectoral ornaments in the 
 British Museum (dating from about 1000 to 300 B.C.), 
 vv here the cubes of glass, similar to those in the fragment 
 overleaf (4), are so sharply defined, and the clay has so 
 unmistakably shrunk away from them in the fire, that 
 it is certain they must have been inlaid in the condition 
 of hard slabs and not of a paste or powder of glass. In 
 other cases a fracture shows here and there a thin 
 slice of glass projecting beyond the thick layer of 
 cement on which it is embedded — cement for which 
 there would have been no occasion if enamel had been 
 used. 
 
 There is a fragment of soapstone in the British 
 
! T 
 
 3. EGYPTIAN CHAMPLEVE— CLAY. 
 
 Museum (4) decorated with little rectangular cubes of 
 red and dark blue glass cemented into the trenches dug 
 out for the purpose, whilst the surface of the pectoral 
 itself is thinly glazed with turquoise blue, this last 
 properly fused in the fire, and showing darker in the 
 engraved lines upon the face of it which mark the 
 
4- SOAPSTONE GLAZED WITH VITREOUS ENAMEL AND INLAID. 
 
 petals of the lotus flowers. This use of enamel in 
 connection with inlay seems clearly to indicate just 
 how far they could go at that date. According to 
 Kondakow this light blue enamel is to be found also 
 upon goldsmith's work. A reddish colour in the sunk 
 parts of chased goldsmith's work as ancient perhaps 
 as the time of Ramses III. (1200 B.C.) seems to have 
 been got by a wash of some metallic substance. Some- 
 thing of the kind is still done in Indo-China and the 
 Far East. It is certainly not vitreous, and consequently 
 not enamel. 
 
 We have only to assume that " electron " means 
 enamel and the antiquity of the art is carried back at 
 once to the siege of Troy : Homer is its witness. But 
 the word may stand either for enamel or for amber, or for 
 the mixture of gold and silver (an alloy found naturally 
 in Siberia and elsewhere), which enamellers early found 
 it convenient to use. That use may account for the 
 confusion of enamel with the metal on which it was 
 done, just as the similarity of amber to translucent 
 enamel explains how it is that the description of the one 
 answers for the other. When literature speaks with 
 
13 
 such an uncertain voice it is safer to rely only upon 
 what remains to us of classic art — and that is not of very 
 great importance. 
 
 There are in all the great museums examples of 
 delicate goldsmith's work dating from perhaps the 
 fourth century B.C. (about the finest period), in which 
 the petals of wee flowers, rosettes and other small 
 details (as in the necklace below), are thinly coated 
 with white or pale blue, within a slightly raised outline 
 of delicate gold wire (cloisonne). All authorities are 
 agreed to accept this as vitreous. It was apparently 
 a very soft enamel, fused with the blowpipe, at such a 
 low temperature that it is by this time mostly in a state 
 of powdery decay. 
 
 The use of colour in this way appears to have been 
 only occasional. Goldsmiths seem, so far, only to have 
 been experimenting. The very way in which they 
 introduced it, always in minute quantities, marks their 
 limitations. Enamelling did not yet amount to an art 
 in itself. All we can say is that jewellers had succeeded 
 in getting some very few vitreous colours to adhere in 
 small quantities to gold. 
 
 There are, however, in the British Museum, two or 
 
 5. GREEK GOLDSMITH S WORK WITH TOUCHES OF ENAMEL. 
 
H 
 three rings, ascribed to the tenth century B.C., which 
 are of an altogether more substantial character, and 
 very different from the thin incrustation of six centuries 
 later. One of these looks more like a thick cord of 
 blue glass (there is a sort of twist in it) than like 
 enamel, and might fairly be described as a glass ring 
 mounted in gold — glass rings were common objects in 
 those days. Or the glass-blower might have come to 
 the aid of the jeweller, and wound round the ring this 
 twisted cord of molten glass. It would only be a short 
 step from that to another ring of the Mycenean period 
 which is more of the ordinary champleve type. 
 
 The third ring shows again a band of vitreous blue 
 framed in gold ; but there is embedded in the blue a 
 pattern in filigree — a key pattern in gold wire — executed 
 in the same way as lettering is sometimes done in 
 Byzantine cloisonne enamel. Still it is not quite 
 certain that we have in this a proof of that high deve- 
 lopment of the art which seems to be indicated. Here, 
 again, it is just possible that the glass-blower may have 
 had a hand in it. Why should he not have spun a 
 stout thread of molten glass round the ring, pressing it 
 well into the interstices of the fret, so that, when it 
 was ground down, the pattern showed in gold upon a 
 blue ground ? Or the goldsmith might (after a fashion 
 still practised in the East) have embedded bent gold 
 wire in the red-hot glass and so produced his pattern. 
 
 It is perfectly plain that the glass-blower did work 
 with the goldsmith. There are in the British Museum 
 some little pendant cocks and swans on Etruscan 
 earrings, found at Chuisi and elsewhere, which it is 
 impossible to mistake for anything but glass. The 
 glass-blower has, as it were, modelled the bird in 
 opaque white glass on an ** armature " (as a sculptor 
 would call it) of gold wire — much in the way that in 
 
15 
 other instances he has made beads in the form of a 
 mask — white glass for the face, blue for the hair, and 
 for the eyes other little round beads stuck into the 
 larger irregularly shaped ones. 
 
 The credit to the Greek artificer is the same, no 
 matter how the work was done ; but it seems strange 
 that, if enamelling had in the tenth century B.C. 
 already reached the point of pattern in cloisonne, it 
 went no further, and there is so little to show for it. 
 
 In the natural course of events one method of work 
 has always been superseded by a better or more con- 
 venient one. It is in the highest degree improbable 
 that, before the days of modern research, a technique, 
 highly developed but extinct, should have been dis- 
 covered again. But that is what is supposed by some 
 to have happened in the case of enamelling. Nowa- 
 days, of course, we discover all sorts of secrets, some 
 of which were never lost. 
 
6. CELTIC BRONZE STUD, WITH VITREOUS COLOUR. 
 
 III. BARBARIAN ENAMEL. 
 
 (CELTIC, GALLO-ROMAN, ETC.) 
 
 All sorts of suppositions have been hazarded as to 
 the origin of enamel in Western Europe, and as to its 
 dissemination. It has even been suggested that it was 
 the work of the gipsies or of some sort of traveUing 
 tinkers who wandered about the world with their kilns. 
 There is no need to dwell upon such speculations. 
 
 With regard to barbaric work generally the question 
 is : How much of it is enamel, as we understand it ? 
 The little hemispherical bosses of colour in the gold 
 cup which forms part of the S. Miklos treasure, at 
 Vienna, are plainly nothing more than little half beads 
 of parti-coloured glass, which may have been imported 
 from anywhere. (The theory that it was ever enamelled 
 all over is untenable.) 
 
 The earliest Celtic or Gaulish enamel, so-called, 
 consists admittedly of studs or buttons of red in deli- 
 berate imitation of coral, and may be at least as pro- 
 perly called glass as anything else. It was not until 
 after the Roman occupation that blue and white were 
 used. 
 
 The red buttons on the shield found in the Thames 
 and now in the British Museum, which is supposed to 
 belong to about the beginning of the Christian era, are 
 
17 
 not, as might be gathered from the diagram given 
 opposite (6), cloisonn6 enamel. The ring of metal and 
 the swastika within it form together a single piece of 
 fretted metal, and this appears to have been impressed 
 into molten glass. The button itself was attached to 
 the shield by a central pin or rivet passing through it 
 and the bronze plate of the shield. 
 
 Archaeologists claim to have discovered at Mont 
 Beuvray, the ancient Bibracte, not only enamel, but 
 the very kiln of the enameller. There is nothing in 
 the find preserved in the museum at St. Germain 
 to prove to the unbiassed mind the practice of 
 enamelling in that place before the Christian era. 
 There are some crucibles, some rings and beads of 
 glass, and some cakes of presumably vitreous colour, 
 which may just as well have been the raw material of 
 the glass-worker as of the enameller. A bronze vase 
 with a scroll pattern grounded-out and filled with what 
 looks like greenish drab or mud-coloured enamel is 
 described as of "provenance inconnue," and so proves 
 nothing. Other vessels in bronze have pattern work 
 hollowed out as it might be for enamel ; but as similar 
 
 7. CELTIC BRONZE CHAMPLEVE. 
 
objects are inlaid with silver, the shallow grounding-out 
 may very likely have been for that. What jewellery 
 there is at St. Germain is decorated, not with enamel, 
 but with encloisoned glass. 
 
 From the time of the Roman occupation of Britain, 
 corresponding to the end of the La Tene period, we 
 find without any doubt vitreous colour fused to bronze 
 
 8. CELTIC BRONZE CHAMPLEVE. 
 
 — the ornament, that is to say, scooped out and filled 
 in with enamel. Here, again, I cannot myself 
 help suspecting that the glass-worker may have 
 anticipated the enameller; and the often-quoted 
 passage from Philostratus about the barbarians by the 
 sea who poured their colour on to the red-hot bronze 
 points (no matter whether they were Gauls or Britons) 
 to the fact of the glass-worker coming to the help of 
 the metal-worker and dropping on to the bronze dabs 
 of molten glass which, when they came to be ground 
 
19 
 down, left in the cavities a pattern in coloured glass. 
 That would account for much that is otherwise difficult 
 to understand ; for, wherever there were skilled workers 
 in both glass and metal, it was within likelihood they 
 should sometimes work together. 
 
 There seems to be nothing to prevent the execution 
 of such work as that shown on page 17 by the glass- 
 blower and metal-worker between them. And as for 
 the brooch opposite, the blend of red and green is 
 
 g. LATE KOMAN BRONZE CHAMPLEVE, FROM PINGUENTE. 
 
 C 2 
 
20 
 
 just what the glass-worker could easily get. To the 
 enameller it would not be so easy. It may, of course, 
 be only the oxidisation of age. 
 
 However it may have been done, we get about the 
 beginning of our era champleve enamel. The little 
 bronze altar-shaped ornament in the British Museum 
 (112) is presumed, on the strength of its not being 
 finished, to have been made in Britain, where it was 
 found. An altogether much more accomplished piece of 
 work is the flask discovered at Pinguente (g), belonging, 
 perhaps, to the middle of the third century, a singularly 
 effective piece of straightforward champleve. Of the 
 three colours in it, lapis blue, orange, and sealing wax 
 red, the red is almost entirely decayed. Riegl suggests 
 that this last was never meant to come to the surface 
 of the metal, and was hacked over to give hold to a 
 subsequent coat of colour, of which there is no trace. 
 As a matter of fact, the broken surface is just what 
 continually occurs where bad enamel splits up in the 
 
 10. ROMANESQUE CHAMPf^VE IN BRONZE. 
 
21 
 
 I. LATE ROMAN CHAMPLEVE IN SILVER. 
 
 process of decomposition. It is the red, by the way, in 
 the Roman altar which has crumbled away. The pattern 
 of the so-called Celtic example from the Victoria and 
 Albert Museum, opposite (lo), suggests, by the foliation 
 in the circles, more a Byzantine origin. The work is in 
 some respects not unlike that in the Pinguente bottle. 
 
 In the first four centuries A.D. there was a good deal 
 of more or less barbaric jewellery, Prankish, Gaulish, 
 or by whatever name it is to be called, decorated with 
 opaque enamel, very often in rectangular divisions plainly 
 rem.iniscent of inlay. The brooch from Vienna, above (i i), 
 is in silver, but there are others of precisely the same 
 pattern in bronze (which was much more commonly 
 used) at the Cluny and at the Victoria and Albert 
 Museums, described in the one case as Gallo-Roman 
 and the other as Romano-British. Whether these were 
 made in the countries where they were found or 
 whether they were imported, it would be rash to say. 
 The clumsier work may be set down as most likely 
 home-made; but the type is in any case Roman. 
 
 In some of the Gallo-Roman and other champleve 
 jewellery the cruciform design of which fixes a date 
 within the Christian era (perhaps the fourth or fifth 
 century) there is a coarse pattern in the colour itself, 
 such as white dots on a blue ground. This is so 
 obviously not designed to fit the space as to suggest the 
 idea of an inlay of patterned glass. 
 
22 
 
 The Gallo-Roman, or, as it is sometimes called, 
 Merovingian, brooch in the Bibliotheque Nationale at 
 Paris (12) has been made by Viollet le Due and others 
 the text of considerable discussion. The question is 
 how the enamelling of the blue and white checquers 
 which alternate with the cubes of red in the inner ring 
 was done, there being no metal between the colours. 
 
 12. GALLO-ROMAN CHAMPLEVE IN BRONZE. 
 
 It has been suggested that red enamel was first laid in, 
 this cut away in parts and filled in with white, and this 
 again partly dug out and filled in with blue. But why, 
 in that case, did the designer go out of his way to adopt 
 a geometric form of design so difficult to execute in 
 enamel ? A much more likely solution is that he put 
 together mosaic-wise cubes alternately of red glass and of 
 tessellated blue and white (cross-slices of blue and white 
 glass rods melted together in the familiar Roman way) 
 
[3- GALLO-ROMAN SO-CALLED ENAMEL. 
 
 and fused them into their place. The fact that the Httle 
 checquered pieces are rectangular and do not radiate to 
 fit their position is in favour of this supposition. 
 
 We find, it is true, in Rhenish and Limoges work of 
 the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries spots and lines 
 evidently got by digging or scraping out some of the 
 moist paste of one colour and filling up with another ; 
 but in that case the outline is always blurred. The 
 sharper outline, too precise to have been done in that 
 way, might have been got by engraving the pattern in 
 the enamel after it was fired, filling it up, and firing it 
 again ; but even that process will not account for the 
 much finer work of a similar kind, commonly described 
 as enamel, which is unmistakably " millefiori " glass 
 inlaid and fused. It is difficult to imagine any other 
 way in which work so minute could be executed. 
 
 The centre diaper in the brooch, above (13), is 
 unmistakably fused Roman glass mosaic. In the 
 larger checquer. A, there is no mistaking how the 
 sections of the grey and white rods enclosed in red go 
 to make the pattern. In the smaller, B, all we can 
 
24 
 
 now see is little square depressions in the blue (clogged 
 up with dust), due no doubt to the decay of the softer 
 glass which went to make a more minute checquer pat- 
 tern produced in the same way. Sections of alternate 
 compound rods of glass of the two patterns, fused to- 
 gether, give the diaper AB. The band of white flowers 
 on a blue ground (C) is similarly made up of little sections 
 ^ of ''millefiori" patterned glass. The outer border (D), 
 which shows a blue pattern on a ground of white 
 "crackle," is at first sight rather puzzling; but on 
 examination one detects a stronger line of dark crackle, 
 which really shows how the pattern was put together, 
 though a multiplicity of other cracks in the glass con- 
 fuse the lines of evidence, so that it is difficult at first 
 to trace them. On close inspection they leave no room 
 for doubt. It is worth mentioning that there is in the 
 museum at Rouen a brooch found in a Prankish 
 cemetery at Creil, near Eu, in which precisely the same 
 patterns of glass are used, though not in quite the same 
 order. 
 
 There is in the Victoria and Albert Museum a 
 specimen of Celtic enamel, so called, in which wee 
 sharply cut flowers are left upstanding in a bed of 
 devitrified powdery substance, only to be accounted for 
 as remains of partly decayed millefiori glass. The 
 flowers are too sharp to have been worked in the soft 
 enamel, and it is hardly likely that little bits of hard 
 glass should have been pressed into enamel paste and 
 fused together with it. If already-fired enamel had 
 been engraved with a diaper of flowers and filled in with 
 other enamel, this last would naturally have been softer 
 than the ground, and the flowers would have perished 
 first, whereas in millefiori glass the flowers would 
 naturally be of harder substance than that in which 
 they were enwrapped. This seems to me conclusive. 
 
 
14- IRISH BRONZE CLOISONNE. 
 
 It will be remembered that in old Egyptian glass in 
 which the zigzag or other decoration was produced by 
 threads of different-coloured material, fused and welded 
 into a compact mass, it is no uncommon thing to find 
 certain of the waves represented only by sunk lines 
 where the streaks of a particular colour have perished. 
 There is only one explanation of this : that the glass 
 fused together was of different consistency, and that 
 some of the colours have gone before the rest. 
 
 The remarkable translucent pattern-work in ancient 
 Irish jewellery, such as the heart-shaped ornament (14) 
 
26 
 
 15- GALLO-ROMAN OR ROMANO-BRITISH BRONZE, MILLEFIORI 
 GLASS AND ENAMEL ? 
 
 now in the Dublin Museum, has more the appearance of 
 glass-work than of enamel ; and in the Romano-British or 
 Graeco-Roman fibula in the Victoria and Albert Museum, 
 above (15), the plaques (A and B) are beginning to 
 separate into little more or less square divisions corre- 
 sponding to the fragments of millefiori glass of which they 
 were composed. This putting together of pieces also 
 goes to explain the usual incoherence of minute pattern- 
 work of this sort, otherwise so puzzling, in Celtic and 
 other early jewellery. In this particular fibula the 
 translucency of the ground colour reveals that particular 
 drag in the design so frequently seen in millefiori glass, 
 
27 
 
 resulting as it must from the process of drawing-out by 
 which the patterns were reduced from manageable 
 dimensions to the tiny scale which is one of the 
 remarkable things about them. 
 
 Glass-work of the minute kind here described in- 
 dicates a proficiency in glass-working far beyond that to 
 which we have any reason to suppose Prankish work- 
 men had attained. The goldsmith who riveted down 
 little plates of punched gold into a framework of silver, 
 below ( 1 6), had clearly much to learn in his craft besides 
 enamelling ; but any bronze-worker would be quite 
 capable of using up precious pieces of patterned glass 
 which came in his way, if not of fusing them together. 
 
 Had this millefiori pattern-work really been enamel- 
 ling, it would have indicated a development of the art 
 nowhere else to be found in the seventh or eighth 
 century, though by that time, of course, Byzantine 
 cloisonne enamel was well established. 
 
 l6. MEROVINGIAN FIBULA IN SILVER, WITH ONLAY OF GOLD FOIL. 
 
IV. BYZANTINE ENAMEL. 
 
 The oldest Byzantine enamel is to be traced no 
 further back than the sixth century, when Persia and 
 Byzantium were in close contact. From the latter 
 part of the ninth to the eleventh century it flourished 
 exceedingly ; and work of that period is comparatively 
 abundant. It is all in gold, usually cloisonne, mostly 
 translucent ; and, if we go by what remains to us and 
 not by what we are told, it was made until the eighth 
 century only in small pieces. In the Iron Crown at 
 Monza (opposite), which may possibly be of the ninth 
 century, it is only the corner pieces between the big 
 seven-petalled flowers or rosettes which are enamelled ; 
 and they seem to have been separately done. It looks as 
 if little pans of enamel had been inserted, four of them 
 in each of the rectangular parts of which the crown is 
 made up. Kondakow considers this to be Lombardic 
 work; Bock calls it Byzantine; but for artistic purposes 
 we may consider Lombardic as Byzantine, and so we 
 may Sicilian. 
 
 In the eleventh century the Abbot of Monte Cassino 
 brought over Byzantine workmen to Italy. Before 
 that there were workshops at Palermo; and the Sicilian 
 work done for the caliphs was very much like the 
 Byzantine, except that it was a little more Saracenic- 
 looking. Technically perhaps it was not quite so good, 
 but it was hardly less beautiful than the best, and it is 
 extremely interesting in design. 
 
ly. THE IRON CROWN OF LOMBARDY, CLOISONNE. 
 
 The heyday of Byzantine enamelling was in the 
 tenth and eleventh centuries, and there is not much of 
 any great importance before that, though the Paliotto 
 at Milan dates from A.D. 835. No part of the famous 
 Pala d'Oro is earlier than A.D. 976, and the Crown of 
 St. Stephen belongs at the earliest to the end of the 
 eleventh century. The Sicilian work in the Treasury at 
 Vienna is chiefly of the twelfth century. 
 
 The kind of cloisonne enamel on gold included under 
 the general title of Byzantine seems not to have spread 
 much further. Something of the kind may have been 
 done in Britain and Ireland in the eighth and ninth 
 centuries ; but the finding of a fibula here and there 
 is no proof that it was made on the spot, and the 
 enamels mounted in Anglo-Saxon or early British gold- 
 smiths' work are not necessarily the work of British 
 enamellers. Antiquaries have a way of ascribing all 
 
30 
 
 CLOISONNE ENAMEL AND ENCLOISONED GLASS. 
 
 they possibly canto their own country. The Hamilton 
 brooch, for example, is claimed by some as Anglo- 
 Saxon, notwithstanding that it has all the character of 
 Byzantine work. 
 
 The Eastern origin of cloisonn^ enamel seems to be 
 
31 
 written on the face of it. It is surmised by Kondakow 
 that it developed itself in Persia and spread from the 
 frontiers of the Sassanian Empire to Transcaspian 
 territories, the Northern Caucasus, Egypt, Asia Minor, 
 South Russia, and along the Don and the Danube. 
 Others say it is Turanian. In any case all this is 
 
 19. BYZANTINE CLOISONNE ENAMEL, TRANSLUCENT. 
 
32 
 conjectural. We have no ancient Persian enamel in 
 proof of a Persian source, though we may trace, or 
 think we trace, Persian influence in Early Byzantine 
 work. We do not even know precisely at what date 
 enamelling was first practised in the city of Constantine ; 
 probably it was in the time of Justinian, in the middle 
 of the sixth century. Such cloisonne of the fifth century 
 as may have come from there is supposed to have been 
 brought with them by artificers driven so far west by the 
 force of historic events, and not done on the spot. 
 
 Byzantine enamel was made at first in very small 
 pieces, often not more than an inch or an inch and a 
 half square or in diameter, such as we see in the 
 book cover in the Treasury at St. Mark's (page 30) 
 which is supposed to be of the seventh century, and 
 the oldest binding of the kind existing. We have no 
 evidence that they had the means of making larger 
 pieces than the plaques, round, square, cruciform, or 
 whatever their shape might be, which the metal-worker 
 used, in conjunction with precious stones en cabochon, to 
 decorate large and important pieces of gold and silver- 
 smiths' work. It was some time before they could 
 make a plaque the size of that shown on page 31, 
 and then they had to eke it out with separate border 
 strips to make a fair-sized reliquary. The shrine 
 work in larger works was built up of separate pieces 
 in the form of arcading, pilasters, and other archi- 
 tectural features. The smaller plaques, framed in 
 filigree or repouss6 work, associated perhaps with 
 encloisoned jewels, were sometimes used in a rather 
 arbitrary way. The fact is, they were not as a rule 
 designed for the special purpose to which they were 
 put. It was a common thing for devout believer or 
 repentant sinner to sacrifice to the Church objects of 
 personal trinketry; and these were in due course 
 
20. JEWELLED METAL PLAQUES SEWN ON TO STUFF. 
 
 worked into the decoration of some Gospel cover, 
 portable altar, or other piece of ecclesiastical furniture, 
 where the difference between the finish of their 
 execution and the crudity of the local silversmiths' 
 work is very striking. But, apart from this, the more 
 one sees of early Byzantine enamel the more impossible 
 E. D 
 
21. THE CROWN OF CONSTANTIA II., 
 
 CLOISONNE ENAMEL OF THE TWELFTH 
 
 CENTURY, PALERMO. 
 
 
 it is to doubt that these little jewels of enamel were 
 from the first made for no more special purpose than to 
 be set wherever they would give point and colour to 
 the design of goldsmith's work. It was at once the 
 
35 
 
 22. BYZANTINE CLOISONNE, PARTLY TRANSLUCENT. 
 
 practical thinj; to make enamel in these little pieces 
 and the artistic thing to use them as jewels. And the 
 making of such little plaques for export became a 
 flourishing Byzantine industry. Another common use 
 of them was in the decoration of stuffs. They 
 were sewn, together with gems and seed pearls, on to 
 royal and ecclesiastical vestments, where they added 
 greatly to the somewhat Oriental magnificence of the 
 embroidery. In the Imperial Treasury of Vienna there 
 
 D 2 
 
36 
 
 are numerous instances of this kind of thing on sword, 
 scabbard, gloves, and imperial mantle, derived, it is 
 not surprising to find, from Sicily. 
 
 An interesting combination of jewellery and silver- 
 smith's w^ork with textile material is shown in the little 
 bag (page 33) preserved in the Germanic Museum at 
 Nuremberg. This is of much later date, and, as it 
 happens, there is no enamel in it ; but it shows to 
 perfection the decorative use of little plaques of metal 
 in connection with woven fabrics, to this day quite 
 common in the East. A similar use of enamel is shown 
 in the cusping round the precious stones, and in the 
 little spandrils between the quatrefoils, on the crown 
 of Constantia (page 34), designed this time apparently 
 for the place they occupy on the cap which is the 
 basis of the crown. The more important enamelled 
 plaques which go to make the crown of Constantine 
 Monomachusat Buda-Pesth show more plainly still how 
 the cap is really the origin of the crown, though the 
 goldsmith's work, originally added to it byway of decora- 
 tion, eventually reduced it to comparative insignificance. 
 
 We think of Byzantine cloisonne as translucent. It 
 was not always so. In the very early work in the Pala 
 d'Oro it is opaque, and in the book cover in the Victoria 
 and Albert Museum (page 35) translucent and opaque 
 colours are both used. And then there is a very 
 charming variety of thirteenth century work (examples 
 of it are to be found at the Bibliotheque Nationale, the 
 Louvre, the Cluny, the Bargello, and other museums) 
 in which a delicate scrollwork of gold wire, on a 
 ground of translucent green or blue, breaks out into 
 leaves and flowers in opaque red, yellow, blue, green, 
 and white enamel. 
 
23- TWELFTH CENTURY CHAMPLEVE, RHENISH. 
 
 V. GOTHIC ENAMEL. 
 
 The Byzantine root of mediaeval enamel, champleve 
 or cloisonne, needs no historic confirmation. The 
 evidence of our eyes is enough. The character of early 
 Western w^ork is unmistakably Byzantine (23, 24). 
 
 The theory, w^hich even French archaeologists no 
 longer very valiantly combat, is that enamelling was 
 introduced into Europe by Theophano, a Byzantine 
 princess who, when she married Otho II., brought 
 with her enamellers from the East. That she took 
 some interest in craftsmanship may be assumed from 
 the favour in which she held St. Bernwald, whose name 
 is associated with the remarkable bronze-founding done 
 at Hildesheim. He was her trusted adviser and the 
 tutor of her sons. The imported artificers worked 
 naturally in gold, as their practice was, and it is not 
 until the twelfth century that we find the art of 
 enamelling on copper well established in Germany. 
 Theophano lived at Treves, and was so much at home 
 
38 
 at Cologne that she chose to be buried there. It was 
 chiefly at Treves and Cologne, Huy (24, 25), Maestricht, 
 and Verdun,, that enamel was practised — towns close 
 enough together to suggest that these various work- 
 shops were not separate growths, but most likely 
 suckers from one parent root planted by Theophano. 
 The occurrence of enamelling at Tegernsee, on the 
 south eastern outskirts of Germany, may be explained 
 by a seed dropped there on the way from the East. 
 What wind blew other seed so far west as Limoges 
 (26) who shall say ? It may have been borne from 
 the Meuse to Paris and thence southward to Bourges, 
 Limoges, and Toulouse, and in a more westerly direction 
 to Chartres, Le Mans, and Angers ; or it may have 
 spread from Limoges upwards to Angers and Le Mans, 
 to Bourges and Chartres, and so reached Paris from 
 the south. 
 
 We have no knowledge of enamel having been done 
 in France before the second half of the twelfth century, 
 and we do know that in 1145 Suger, Abbot of St. Denis, 
 sent for enamellers to that very province of Germany 
 
 EARLY GERMAN CHAMPLEVE ENAMEL. 
 
25* TWELFTH CENTURY CHAMPLEVE ENAMEL EXECUTED AT 
 HUY BY GODFREY DE CLAIRE. 
 
40 
 where it was undoubtedly practised. There would 
 have been no occasion to do that had there been 
 capable artists nearer home. That, by the way, would 
 point to Paris, the nearest point to the Meuse, as the 
 nursery of the art in France. There is significance 
 also in the story that later still, in the year 1181, some 
 French monks from Grandmont in the Limousin went 
 to the Rhine and brought back with them Rhenish 
 enamels. It is to the year 1189 that the earliest 
 known products of Limoges are ascribed. The theory 
 of Limoges enamel having been derived from Venice 
 would be more credible if we had evidence of enamel 
 having been practised there at the time, which there 
 does not seem to be. 
 
 It is not because it was the starting point of the art, 
 still less because of any superiority of the work done 
 there, that Limoges is identified in most men's minds 
 with the kind of enamel practised in the Middle Ages, 
 but, on the contrary, because of the enormous quantity 
 of work, good, indifferent, and downright bad, turned 
 out there in the thirteenth century, when the art had 
 become a trade conducted on the scale of wholesale 
 manufacture. 
 
 The already-mentioned Byzantine art established at 
 Monte Cassino developed in rather later Gothic times 
 into champleve on silver. The Italians do not seem to 
 have taken so kindly to bronze. 
 
 In England we have not much to boast of. There 
 is the tomb of William de Valence at Westminster; 
 but, as Sir Woollaston Franks points out, he belonged 
 to a family which had possessions in the Limousin ; 
 and the inference that the enamels for his tomb 
 were brought over from there is obvious. The very 
 interesting altar decoration from the Abbey now in 
 the Jerusalem Chamber is decorated with plaques of 
 
41 
 
 26. THIRTEENTH CENTURY CHAMPLEVE, LIMOGES. 
 
27- THIRTEENTH CENTURY 
 CHAMPLEvfe, LIMOGES. 
 
 42 
 
 imitation cloisonne, painted 
 on the under-side of glass, 
 which does not point to a 
 flourishing condition of en- 
 amelling in this country at 
 the beginning even of the 
 second Gothic period. If 
 the genuine thing had been 
 readily obtainable a rich 
 Church would not have been 
 likely to put up with its 
 cheap substitute. 
 
 The "provenance" of any 
 particular piece of work is 
 never so sure as even internal evidence would seem to 
 show. There was such constant intercourse between 
 centres of industry, more particularly between the 
 monasteries even of countries far apart, that the in- 
 fluence of one school upon another goes without saying. 
 Was there ever a time when competitors did not promptly 
 follow up the successes of their rivals? It is certain that 
 even what we call characteristics of one school were 
 copied by others, with a view to cutting into its trade. 
 Mediaeval champleve, German as well as French, is 
 very often loosely described as Limoges. 
 
 All things considered, a term like *' Limoges" is 
 best used with discretion ; and, bearing in mind that 
 the town became eventually famous for work of a very 
 different kind, it would seem to be the better plan to 
 reserve it as far as possible for the painted enamel 
 brought to such perfection there. 
 
 When we think of it, there is no reason why enamel 
 should not have been made wherever they made 
 stained glass. The strips of bronze between enamel 
 colours correspond precisely to the strips of lead 
 
43 
 between the pieces of glass which go to make an Early 
 Gothic window ; and they constantly remind one of 
 them. There is, for example, a twelfth century casket 
 in the Gewerbs Museum at Vienna in which the 
 severity of the lines makes you think at once of stained 
 glass. 
 
 The likelihood seems to be that champleve is the 
 direct outcome of Byzantine cloisonn6. This new 
 departure in the direction of champleve (27, 28) is but 
 the workmanlike solution of the problem set by the 
 goldsmith to the bronze-worker. It was no such easy 
 
 28. THIRTEENTH CENTURY CHAMPLEVE, LIMOGES. 
 
29- MIXED CHAMPLEVE AND CLOISONNE ENAMEL. 
 
 task for him to beat down his design in silhouette, and 
 build up within it thin dividing lines of metal to keep 
 colours apart and in place, which was the natural 
 thing to do in thin gold. Plainly the simpler thing to 
 do in thick bronze was to dig troughs for the colour 
 out of the solid metal. 
 
 For certain purposes it might still be advisable to 
 use cloisons. At first gold cloisons were naturally used; 
 but throughout the twelfth century we find champleve 
 helped out with cloisons of bronze (29). 
 
 That seems to indicate a stage of transition between 
 the two methods. According to von Falke, however 
 
30. THIRTEENTH CENTURY CHAMPLEVE, LIMOGES. 
 
 (than whom no one speaks with more authority), the 
 mixed work is, on the whole, rather later in date than 
 pure champleve ; and he argues from that, that the 
 case of the development of German champleve from 
 Byzantine cloisonne is not made out. Perhaps not. 
 But is there enough of the old work remaining, and is 
 the date of it certain enough, to shake the not un- 
 reasonable conviction that the probable, and indeed 
 the obvious, course of events was the actual one ? 
 The consideration of what a workman would instinc- 
 tively do is also an argument, though it may be one 
 that would have more weight with artists than with 
 
46 
 antiquaries. The use, in the first place, of gold cloisons* 
 is not denied. Whether they were superseded by 
 copper cloisons, and these, again, by upstanding ridges 
 left in the ground metal, or whether the transition was 
 straight from cloisons of gold to pure champleve in 
 copper, and it was only afterwards that they saw fit to 
 revert to copper wire (which hardly seems likely), does 
 not greatly affect the question of how champleve came 
 about. The likeness of it in design to cloisonne — the 
 ridges of metal left standing were often as nearly as 
 possible like wire lines — leaves no possible doubt as to 
 the source from which the mediaeval workman drew his 
 inspiration. What other possible source was there ? 
 
 Champleve, it is said, was a " Gallo-Roman tradi- 
 tion." No doubt it was the custom of the bronze-worker 
 to ground out pattern-work and inlay it with silver, and 
 so forth. That is precisely why, when asked to inlay 
 enamel, he would be likely to set about it in that way. 
 Given the introduction of cloisonne and the desire to 
 do something of the kind in bronze, "there was nothing 
 for it but champleve. Any prejudice there may have 
 been at court in favour of the goldsmith's way of doing 
 it (and we may take a certain conservatism for granted) 
 was bound to be overridden by practical considerations. 
 After all it would matter little to the patron how an 
 effect was got so long as the workman got it ; and if 
 he got it more cheaply so he would be allowed to go 
 his own way. 
 
 The determining factor in the new development was 
 the use of bronze. The bronze it was which suggested 
 the method of workmanship. It decreed that the colour 
 should be opaque, for it was impossible to preserve its 
 translucency upon a metal containing tin enough to 
 cloud it. The bronze it was which made possible the 
 production of large pieces ; and, in a sense, it was the 
 
47 
 desire to produce works of 
 considerable size which, with 
 the prohibitive preciousness 
 of gold, determined the use 
 of bronze. 
 
 The mediaeval enamellers 
 began, as their Byzantine 
 forerunners had done, with 
 relatively small pieces of 
 work, with circular plaques, 
 bosses, shields, and other 
 ornaments, to adorn a casket. 
 Before long they found it 
 possible to enamel the casket 
 itself (30). Eventually they 
 produced pieces of consider- 
 able size, though to the last 
 they were not able to enamel 
 anything like a life - sized 
 figure. The effigy of Arch- 
 bishop Maurice at Burgos 
 Cathedral (31) is in wood, 
 overlaid with sheets of gilt 
 bronze, some of which (those 
 in the mitre, stole, and 
 cushion, for example) are 
 enamelled. There is colour 
 in the flesh too, but that is 
 not vitreous. 
 
 At the 'beginning of the 
 thirteenth century Limoges 
 was famous for the shrines, 
 reliquaries, and all manner 
 of church vessels turned out 
 of its workshops. But as the quantity of the output 
 
48 
 
 increased the quality of the work dechned, until, in the 
 fourteenth century, it fell into neglect and went alto- 
 gether out of fashion. Whether it was the change of 
 fashion which led to its decline, or it was the decline 
 of the workmanship which brought it into disfavour, 
 may be a question. There is no question that it 
 deserved its fate. 
 
 The use of translucent colour upon silver, a favourite 
 practice in Italy, led to the very interesting form of work 
 known as " Basse Taille " (Chapter XII.), and that in 
 turn to painted enamel (Chapter XIX.), which ends in 
 being an art apart from goldsmiths' work. 
 
VI. RUSSIAN, HUNGARIAN AND EASTERN 
 ENAMEL. 
 
 Nearer its Eastern source the course of enamel is 
 no easier to follow. The pedigree of what may be 
 called filigree enamel is not quite made out, though the 
 relation of Magyar to Grseco-Russian work, and of both 
 to Byzantine, to which it looks as if they ought to 
 be traced is clear. Byzantine cloisonne did not extend 
 beyond the fourteenth century, and Hungarian wire 
 enamel does not seem to have begun until the fifteenth. 
 There is a gap of about a century to be filled up between 
 the two. The earliest known Hungarian church-work 
 appears to be home-grown, though both the wire for it 
 and the glass paste came from Venice and Ragusa, and 
 filigree itself, an art already established in Hungary by 
 the end of the fourteenth century, went by the name of 
 " Opus Ragusanum." Greek workmen, as we know, 
 were dispersed far and wide after the taking of Con- 
 stantinople by the Turks ; and in the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries, if not before that, there were 
 important depots for Byzantine wares in Hungary. 
 
 In the sixteenth century enamel came into use for 
 trinkctry (as distinct from church plate and the like) in 
 Transylvania. That was after the Turkish invasion. 
 The Turks brought with them not only Oriental tastes, 
 but Oriental workmen, and a change of style took place. 
 After that we get wire enamel in connection with 
 elaborate filigree. 
 
 Some similarity between Hungarian and German 
 E. E 
 
50 
 work may be accounted for by the fact that apprentices 
 who had served their time in Hungary went to Augsburg 
 and Nuremberg to perfect themselves in their trade. 
 They would naturally take with them the traditions in 
 which they had been brought up, and bring back foreign 
 notions from abroad. 
 
 The material of Russian wire enamel, " finift " or 
 '' phinipt," as it was called, was, according to Kondakow, 
 a sort of pottery glaze derived from the Tartars ; and 
 the Oriental source of later Russian and South Slavonic 
 *' finift " is to be found, he says, in the Balkan peninsula, 
 whence in the fifteenth century enamels were brought 
 to the convent of Mount Athos. In Turkey, too, there 
 seems to have been a kindred variety of "finift," related 
 to Persian faience, executed by Indian and Persian work- 
 men. Kondakow's word for the stream of influence to 
 which all this may be attributed is *' Oriental-European," 
 and it seems unsafe to try and get much nearer to a 
 definition than that. 
 
 As for the particular kind of work described as " wire 
 enamel " (32) it might quite well have arisen indepen- 
 dently in any country where filigree was used ; but the 
 indications all go to suggest that it comes, directly or 
 indirectly, from Byzantium. If it is not derived from 
 Byzantine cloisonne — Hampel says it is not — then it 
 was in all probability evolved out of Byzantine filigree, 
 which certainly seems to cry out for colour. 
 
 Turning now to the far East, there are various 
 theories as to the introduction of enamel into China ; 
 but no one any longer claims very remote antiquity for 
 it there. Indeed, our faith in the hoary antiquity of 
 things Chinese has of late been very rudely shaken. 
 Porcelain itself, according to the latest authorities, goes 
 no further back than to a dynasty extending from about 
 two-hundred years before to two-hundred years after our 
 
51 
 
 32. WIRE ENAMEL, NATIONAL MUSEUM, BUDA-PESTH. 
 
 era. Dated examples of Chinese cloisonne do not help us 
 much. They are rare, and China is the land of forgeries. 
 The methods practised there correspond closely with 
 those employed in mediaeval Europe ; and the Celestials 
 themselves, who make no claim to have invented the 
 
 E 2 
 
52 
 
 art, described their production as " devil's ware,"t'and 
 even w^ent so far as to specify the particular devils 
 alluded to as French or Prankish. It is true they also 
 called it " Arabian ware," and there is record of its 
 introduction into South China, independently, by the 
 Khans a century or more after it was brought from 
 Europe. Bird wood describes it as of Turanian origin, 
 introduced by the Yenechi. It is also said that a 
 succession of artificers travelled across Asia and set up 
 workshops on their way, just as in the Merovingian 
 period Syrian workmen implanted the Byzantine arts in 
 France. 
 
 There is little likelihood of enamelling having been 
 practised in China until after the Mongolian invasion 
 in the thirteenth century. The earliest known specimens 
 are not thought to be older than about the middle of 
 the fourteenth. These are rude in execution, imperfectly 
 vitrified, and low in tone ; and, though a century after 
 that abundant work was done, it was not until the 
 seventeenth century (33) that the Chinese arrived at the 
 perfection of execution which we value in their work. 
 Shortly before that, towards the end of the sixteenth 
 century, enamelling found its way from China to Japan. 
 
 Enamel is not thought to be indigenous in India ; 
 and, expert as were the enamellers of Lahore and else- 
 where, nothing is known of Indian work before the 
 middle of the sixteenth century. There is a strong con- 
 sensus of opinion to the effect that it was introduced 
 from Persia, and that it is there we must seek the origin 
 of the art. Kondakow tells of a find at Perm, in 
 Siberia, consisting of goldsmiths' work, now in the Her- 
 mitage, enamelled with cobalt, grey blue, turquoise, and 
 occasional pale coral pink — typically Eastern colours — 
 supposed to be by a Persian artificer of somewhere 
 between the third and sixth centuries ; but, with that 
 
53 
 
 33. FRETTED CHINESE CLOISONNE ENAMEL. 
 
54 
 
 exception, it must be confessed we have no very ancient 
 Persian enamel to support the supposition. 
 
 On the other hand, we read of early barbarian enamel 
 discovered in Russia (in the district of Polosk), ascribed 
 to the fourth, if not to the first, century, which is akin to 
 work found in Sweden, and points, it is thought, to an 
 early independent Slavonic art. It is even surmised 
 that the enamel of antiquity was the product of Northern 
 barbaric art derived from Armenia and the Caucasus. 
 Another suggestion is that it travelled from Assyria 
 to Egypt and was brought to Europe by the 
 Phoenicians. 
 
 The further we go into the question of the origin of 
 enamel, the deeper becomes the mystery in which it is 
 involved. The one gleam of light is upon recurring 
 points of design invariably characterised by something 
 which we recognise as " Oriental." But there are 
 possibly archaeologists who will maintain that what 
 strikes us as Eastern is nothing of the kind — Northern 
 perhaps ! 
 
34- OSTRO-GOTHIC ENCLOISONED GLASS, RAVENNA. 
 
 VII. ENCLOISONED STONES AND GLASS, 
 AND IMITATION JEWELS. 
 
 The connection between enamelling and the jeweller's 
 mosaic of precious or semi-precious stones and glass, in 
 imitation of them, is too obvious not to count for 
 something in the history of art. 
 
 Coloured glass was in its origin only an imitation of 
 jewels, and in early days enamel also was meant to be 
 a substitute for things more precious, if not in every 
 case a counterfeit. It is certainly not by accident that 
 translucent enamel takes the hue of ruby, sapphire, 
 emerald, garnet, or topaz, and that the colours of 
 opaque enamel are best described by the names of 
 lapis lazuH, turquoise, coral, and so forth. Apart from 
 
56 
 fraud, it seems as human to imitate as to err ; and 
 from the earhest days we find imitations, at first in 
 glass and then in enamel, of anything that was 
 precious, and especially of that which was in fashion. 
 The earliest British use of enamel was not only con- 
 fined to coral red, but occurred in the very form of 
 those coral studs with which, according to Pliny, the 
 "barbarians" were wont to decorate their shields and 
 helmets. 
 
 Widely as the art of enamelling seems to have been 
 known, it was not universally practised. But every- 
 where we come upon jewellery with stones, or the 
 glass imitation of them, onlaid, inlaid, and encloisoned. 
 Such encloisoning was, in fact, the most characteristic 
 feature of barbaric jewellery. Witness the find at 
 Petrossa, the cup of Chosroes (at the Bibliotheque 
 Nationale, Paris), the crown from Guarrazar (at Madrid), 
 and Byzantine, Merovingian, Anglo-Saxon, and " bar- 
 baric " goldsmiths' work generally (34). The notion 
 may have come from Egypt or Syria, from Central 
 Asia or the Sassanian Empire ; in any case it is sug- 
 gestive always of Oriental influence. And down to our 
 own day coral and turquoise have been simulated not 
 only in Eastern work, but in the European derived 
 from it. 
 
 So Indian artificers not only incrust jade and 
 crystal with rubies, emeralds, and other precious stones, 
 en cabochon, outlined with gold, which forms also stems to 
 the jewelled leaves and flowers and holds the pattern 
 together, but imitate this inlay as closely as possible 
 in enamel. Not that jade or crystal is enamelled, but 
 that, in imitation of this Mogul work,little jewels of trans- 
 lucent red and green enamel framed in gold (presumably 
 contained in little metal pans with a raised edge giving 
 a gold outline) are inlaid into the jade, not, of course, 
 
35- CHAMPLEVE ENAMEL INCRUSTED WITH JEWELS EN 
 CABOCHON, FRENCH. 
 
58 
 fused to it, but cemented into beds dug out for its 
 reception. 
 
 A rather unusual mediaeval combination of enamel 
 and inlaid stones is shown on page 57, where stones 
 en cabochon are used, as it were, to focus the colour. 
 
 The development of enamelling was possible only in 
 proportion as knowledge, empirical as it may have 
 been, supplied a palette of sufficiently fusible vitreous 
 colours. At first goldsmiths got their colours as best 
 they could, with natural stones or glass or enamel, if 
 they had it. Nothing which supplied the colour 
 wanted came amiss to them ; cement would do if they 
 could get it no other way. It can hardly be said that 
 they did not play fair : rules of the game had not yet 
 been formulated. 
 
 Enamelling soon passed into a stage when it was 
 something more than imitation. But there is the fact : 
 it began as a substitute for glass, itself a makeshift for 
 something more precious. There is no disputing the 
 course of events, 'first the inlay of stones more or less 
 precious, followed by sham jewels of glass, then the 
 fusing of the glass into its socket, and finally enamel. 
 When it began to be realised that this was not only 
 a simpler and cheaper way of getting something like 
 jewels, but a means to effects which neither jewel- 
 setting nor its imitation would give, the future of his 
 art lay clear before the enameller. 
 
 We may take it that the use of encloisoned bits of 
 garnet, glass, or whatever it may have been, implies 
 no great skill in enamelling on the part of the jeweller, 
 and also that the introduction of enamel in the form of 
 little rectangular cubes (36, 43) is reminiscent always 
 of stone or glass setting. 
 
 Glass inlay, it has been said, ''supplied for a time 
 the place of enamel." It is, more properly speaking, 
 
59 
 the obvious prelude to it. Stones must have been used 
 before enamel. Nature made garnets and lapis and 
 turquoises long before man invented glass flux. One 
 cannot imagine an expert enameller going back to 
 encloisoned jewellery. At first, indeed, so long as 
 
 36. GALLO-ROMAN BRONZE DISC WITH BLUE ENAMEL IN THE 
 FORM OF INLAID TESSERA, GALLO-ROMAN. 
 
 enamel was only a makeshift, it would be held in less 
 esteem than that which it replaced ; but when once the 
 artist came to realise the scope enamel colour gave 
 him, there could be no thought of return to the more 
 restricted use of encloisoned stones, except, indeed, 
 for the boast of the thing. That is a vulgarity for 
 which the patron, not the artist, may justly be held 
 responsible. 
 
 That enamel was in some quarters always considered 
 as at best a makeshift for work in precious stones, is 
 shown by the use made of it, as, for example, in the 
 
6o 
 border, at the back only, of the Lyte jewel (page "]"]), 
 where it is deliberately employed as a substitute for the 
 rubies and sapphires shown on the face of the locket. 
 And in the goldsmith's work of Delhi it is chiefly to 
 the reverse side of the jewellery that the (Jaipur) 
 enamel is confined. 
 
 The place of inlay was in old time constantly and 
 everywhere supplied by cements of various kinds, 
 " mastics," as they are rather vaguely called. The 
 Chinese have a pretty way of inlaying jewellery with 
 bits of kingfishers' feathers, which have a wonderful 
 resemblance to cloisonne enamel, except that the hues 
 are much more brilliant than they can get in cobalt 
 and copper blues. 
 
 You may to this day buy in the East enamels, 
 so called, in which the colour is simply wax floated 
 into the cells formed by wire filigree. Given the use of 
 inlays or cements and the practice of fusing glass inlay 
 into cells, what more inevitable than that it should 
 occur to someone to make a cement of glass powder 
 which he could fuse into its metal setting, and so save 
 all the trouble of cutting and fitting little scraps of 
 glass together ? . " 
 
VIII. CLOISONNE. 
 
 Cloisonne was the goldsmith's way of enamelling. It 
 belongs to the use of gold, the preciousness of which 
 encouraged, if it did not suggest, the process. The 
 precious material determined that it should be used 
 thin, and its ductility made cloisonage easy. It was 
 soldering, essentially a goldsmith's process, which first 
 made it possible. 
 
 The ancient Greeks used, if not cloisons, something 
 very like them. To make vitreous colour adhere to 
 gold, fusion was necessary. Fusion meant the spread- 
 ing of the colour, and the problem was how to prevent 
 it from overflowing its boundaries. That was most 
 simply done by soldering on a barrier, and the finest 
 possible gold wire was enough to enclose the quite thin 
 film of colour employed by the Greeks. As a matter of 
 fact, we find the petals of little flowers, or whatever the 
 form of the minute parts to which they ventured to apply 
 colour, were outlined by a fine line of gold. Even long 
 after that, during the Renaissance, when enamellers 
 had great control over their colour, they still kept it 
 within bounds by the aid of a raised line so fine that it 
 is not until you look for it that you see it is there. The 
 soldering on of gold wire was a favourite device of 
 Greek and Etruscan goldsmiths, and they produced by 
 means of it most characteristic ornament. 
 
 The Byzantine goldsmith, who first brought enamel- 
 ling into artistic prominence, was accustomed to make 
 sockets for cabochon jewels out of upstanding strips or 
 
62 
 
 " tapes " of metal soldered on and afterwards bent over 
 the edges of the stone to hold it in place. What more 
 natural than that, when occasion arose to enclose deep 
 layers of enamel, he should build up walls for it with 
 these same strips of gold ? 
 
 The way was long before prepared for cloisonne 
 enamel. It involved no process with which the jeweller 
 was not already familiar. He was in the habit of 
 soldering on not only sockets for the reception of jewels, 
 but actual cloisons even for his mosaics of precious 
 stones. The network of flat wire was part of his stock 
 in trade ; all he had to do was to fill it up with a new 
 substance. Not even that, for he was already in the 
 habit of using glass for inlay ; he had only to introduce 
 the old substance in a new and more fusible form 
 and, instead of bedding it in cement, to flux it into 
 its setting. Indeed, the ancient Egyptian setting 
 for lapis, carnelian, and other mosaic jewellery is so 
 precisely what might have been done for enamel, 
 that many people will have it that inlay of the sort 
 is enamel. 
 
 Whether by way of preparation the enameller first 
 beat down a trough in the thin plate of metal and built 
 up his cloison walls within that, whether he applied 
 his colour in the form of paste or of dry powder, 
 whether he fused it in a muffle of some kind or with the 
 blowpipe which was part of every goldsmith's parapher- 
 nalia,arematters of no consequence. He had but to fill in 
 the cells with enamel, to fix it in the fire, to repeat the 
 process until the colour came well up to the face of the 
 cloisons, to grind it smooth and polish it until it was 
 translucent, and the process of Byzantine cloisonne was 
 perfected. 
 
 The thickness of cloisons in Byzantine work is to 
 some extent governed by the consideration that they had 
 
to be bent into shape, 
 and it was necessary 
 they should bend easily. 
 But one meets with 
 cloisons that look more 
 like champleve. There 
 is, for example, in the 
 Gewerbs Museum at 
 Cologne a piece of fif- 
 teenth century Spanish 
 work in which orna- 
 ment of the usual kind 
 is framed in strips of 
 bronze about three- 
 eighths of an inch thick. 
 These form the main 
 strap-like divisions of the 
 design, and bear to the 
 thinner cloisons about 
 the proportion of the iron 
 bars to the lead work 
 in a thirteenth century 
 stained glass window. 
 
 The at one time un- 
 avoidable use of cloisons 
 affected, of course, the 
 design of enamel ; it 
 accounts for the minute- 
 ness of detail in Byzan- 
 tine work, and for that 
 network of gold lines 
 which has such a won- 
 derful effect upon the 
 colour. A colourist would see at once the value of 
 the gold line, and take it into account in his design ; 
 
 37- 
 
 BYZANTINE CLOISONNE ENAMEL, 
 THE ARCHANGEL MICHAEL. 
 
64 
 
 38. CHINESE CLOISONNE ENAMEL. 
 
 but it was in the first instance not an artistic device, 
 but a necessity of the case. Without cloisons there 
 was no relying upon the adherence of the enamel. So 
 essential were they to sound work that where, as in 
 the rendering of the human face, exceptionally broad 
 surfaces of unbroken enamel occur, cloisons have 
 actually been used, only they are shallower than the 
 rest, and are covered up by the last coat of enamel. 
 This was readily fused to the enamel underlying it, 
 and safely bridged over the submerged cloisons. 
 Kondakow, who first pointed this out, gives in his 
 book a convincing illustration of the way it was 
 done. 
 
 It turns out, then, that, though we usually talk as 
 
65 
 
 if cloisons were used only to enclose the enamel and to 
 separate one colour from another, their actual function 
 was also, as the word itself implies, to give key to the 
 glass, and make it hold on to the metal. The larger 
 the area of enamel the more likely it was to flake off. 
 It was expedient to leave no very large unbroken sur- 
 face ; and, as a matter of practice, early enamellers 
 one and all reduced the cells to the smallest possible 
 dimensions, and broke up any mass of one colour with 
 lines of wire, in the form of folds in drapery, feathering 
 in wings, pattern-work, or whatever it might be. The 
 Byzantine figure on page 63 is netted all over with fine 
 gold lines ; and in the ancient figures in the Pala d'Oro 
 at St. Mark's (A.D. 976 — 1105) the draperies are so 
 worked over with zigzags of metal, by way of express- 
 ing folds, as to have the effect of fabrics shot with gold. 
 So in coloured draperies diapered with another colour 
 the gold outline between the two adds such extra- 
 ordinary richness to the enamel colour that we forget 
 that it is in reality opaque. Minute detail was plainly 
 invented for the express purpose of making the work 
 secure. The fulness of old Japanese pattern-work was 
 deliberately designed to avoid the difficulty presented by 
 large surfaces. For the same reason the Chinese artist 
 broke his coloured ground with diaper in wire. This, 
 as it happens, goes towards harmony of colour; but, 
 had it been otherwise, there would have been some 
 compensation in the use of the cloison as a means of 
 giving drawing, as, for example, on page 64, where the 
 waves of the sea, the leaves of the trees, and the swirl 
 of the clouds, are all given in lines of gilt metal upon 
 the flat colour. Inscriptions in gold wire upon a 
 coloured ground were very happily introduced into 
 Byzantine and mediaeval design. 
 
 Both in early goldsmith's work and in old enamel upon 
 E. F 
 
66 
 
 bronze the cloisons were soldered on. It was the work- 
 manhke thing to do. In recent years the Japanese 
 have found that they can do without solder ; and they 
 save themselves some trouble by attaching cloisons 
 only temporarily with gum, and trusting to the enamel 
 itself, when it fuses, to hold them fast. One might have 
 been disposed to speculate whether possibly the idea 
 of thus dispensing with solder might not have arisen 
 out of the quite modern use of cloisonne enamel upon 
 porcelain^ where metal tapes could easily be planted in 
 the plastic clay, and solder was out of the question ; 
 but there are grounds for supposing Byzantine work- 
 men already to have shirked labour in that way. The 
 Japanese have gone still further astray from the ancient 
 practice, and, regarding cloisons no longer as a necessity, 
 use them only for outlining or drawing lines. They 
 have apparently no difficulty in covering large areas 
 with plain enamel unbroken by cloisons. 
 
 The modern tendency is to avoid them as much as 
 possible, and to aim at a pictorial effect to which of 
 old there was no temptation. There is no denying the 
 wonderful effects produced. But it is not altogether 
 prejudice in favour of more severe design which makes 
 one hesitate to accept the new manner as an improve- 
 ment upon the old. In this age of science we should 
 be gaining every day greater control over our materials. 
 Modern chemical research is continually opening out 
 new possibilities ; but it does not alter the nature of 
 things. Vitreous colour and the fire that fuses it 
 remain what they were ; there is still safety in small 
 cells ; and if, as seems obvious, this new departure is 
 made possible only by the use of a softer enamel, the 
 use of this more perishable material can hardly be 
 reckoned as an advance in the practice of enamelling. 
 
IX. CHAMPLEVE. 
 
 Champlevr was the coppersmith's way of doing what 
 the goldsmith did in cloisonne or in repousse. And, 
 just as the goldsmith used cloisons to make sockets for 
 stone or glass before ever he thought of enamelling, 
 so everywhere the bronze-worker was in the habit of 
 " grounding out " ornament in a way which, no less 
 than the encloisoned jewellery of ancient Egypt (i), 
 suggests the possible inlaying of enamel. A striking 
 instance of this occurs in an Egyptian libation cup in 
 the Petit Palais at Paris. 
 
 It is in fact as natural to dig trenches for enamel out 
 of thick copper as to beat them down in thin gold, or to 
 build up cells within them; and the process may be said 
 to have grown out of the use of copper itself. It results 
 from the desire to produce work of considerable size, 
 and from the scarcity of gold with which to do it. The 
 continued use, in the first instance, of gold cloisons upon 
 copper was what might have been expected. Copper 
 cloisons were naturally thicker than cloisons of gold, 
 less pliable, and not so easily soldered ; and it was soon 
 found to be the simpler plan to dig away the ground 
 and leave the lines of metal upstanding. These at first 
 had very much the appearance of cloisons, so much so 
 that, where the two processes are used in combination, 
 one has sometimes to look closely to distinguish which 
 is champleve and which cloisonne. 
 
 Before very long, however, enamellers on copper 
 worked out a system of their own. They evolved, 
 
 F 2 
 
68 
 that is to say, a convention proper to the method of 
 workmanship employed. The enameller of the crucifix 
 opposite (39) was feehng his way towards it. The figure, 
 though champleve, is designed very much as it might 
 have been for cloisonne ; but the scroll on the cross is 
 " reserved " in the bronze : it is only the background to 
 it that is in colour. The characteristically sinuous lines 
 which come of bending about strips of metal tape very 
 soon gave place to more angular forms, produced by 
 scooping away the solid metal on either side of them. 
 The multiplicity of fine lines, so easy to get in wire 
 and so expressive of cloisonne, also disappeared. The 
 temptation was now in the opposite direction, viz., to 
 make use of the metal ground, broad surfaces of which 
 formed henceforth a feature in design (28, 29, 40, &c.). 
 
 It is a distinguishing characteristic of champleve 
 enamel that an appreciable part of the gilt bronze 
 should be left bare of enamel ; and, indeed, a design in 
 which that is not done, and where so much of the 
 surface of the metal is dug away that it only appears 
 in lines, strikes one as inappropriate to the method. 
 
 Further, lest the contrast between rich enamel and 
 plain metal should be too great or suggest too obviously 
 the idea of saving labour, enamellers (at this time always 
 metal-workers, it must be remembered) had the happy 
 thought of engraving or chasing the metal that was 
 left bare. A common practice was to leave broad 
 horizontal bands of metal across the background, and 
 to enrich them with full pattern-work, rather curiously 
 Byzantine in character for the twelfth or thirteenth 
 century. Another plan was to reserve the pattern in 
 metal and fill in the ground with colour (29, 40, 
 43, 44). That made, of course, a great difference in 
 design. 
 
 Technically it is a matter of no consequence whether 
 
39- EARLY CHAMPLEVfe ENAMEL, IN THE GERMANIC MUSEUM 
 AT NUREMBERG. 
 
40 CHAMPLEVE ENAMEL IN THE CLUNY MUSEUM. 
 
 it is the pattern or its background which is left as a foil 
 to the enamel. The significant thing is that, though 
 colour on colour (ornament, for example, in varied 
 colours upon a dark blue ground) is common enough 
 in mediaeval work, the usual practice in champleve was 
 to " reserve " a fair proportion of the metal either for 
 the pattern or for the background to it. 
 
 With regard to figure design, the course of mediaeval 
 practice was, roughly speaking, this. At first figures 
 were represented in colour upon a gilt ground (as they 
 had been before in Byzantine goldsmith's work), the 
 
7' 
 
72 
 
 flesh in white or in a purplish tint (39), the metal ground 
 diapered with engraved or chased scrollwork. In the 
 course of the twelfth century the fashion changed, and 
 it was the figure work which came to be '* reserved " 
 in metal on a background of enamel. That was so 
 much the easiest thing to do. These occasional masses 
 of gilt, in the network of gold lines breaking up the 
 colours, were of considerable decorative value, and 
 became a feature in champleve design. It will readily 
 be understood that the resort to figures entirely in metal 
 relieved the enameller of considerable difficulty. In 
 particular the convention of gilt flesh was a very simple 
 and quite satisfactory solution of an awkward problem 
 in treatment. The definition of the features (perhaps 
 against a ground also of metal) by strong drawing lines 
 in red or blue (86) was a practice favoured at first by the 
 German enamellers. It was obviously easier to get 
 drawing in lines engraved and filled in with colour than in 
 lines left standing in the metal grounded-out for enamel 
 on both sides of it. The effect of these lines of colour 
 upon metal is the reverse of that got in cloisonne, where 
 the lines are of metal upon a coloured ground. 
 
 The next step in Gothic procedure was from figures 
 either quite flat (45) or in the lowest possible relief (41) to 
 images practically in the round ; but, though in twelfth 
 century work the introduction of colour into the draperies 
 helped to bring them more into focus with the picture 
 than they were in later figure-work, devoid of colour, the 
 effect was at the best not altogether one of unity. At the 
 worst it was most incongruous. It is not that modelling 
 in high relief is incompatible with colour, but that there 
 is something unsatisfactory in the effect of little bronze 
 dolls cast separately and attached to the face of a 
 picture. When it happened to be only a single figure 
 which was distinguished in this way from others so 
 
42. PART OF AN ENAMELLED SHRINE IN THE MUSEUM 
 AT BURGOS. 
 
43- ELEVENTH CENTURY CHAMPLEVE, LIMOGES. 
 
 delicately chased as practically not to be in relief at 
 all, the underlying symbolism was hardly enough 
 to recommend so naive an expression of emphasis. 
 There is still less excuse for tlie applied heads, so 
 constantly standing out in knobbly relief against the 
 flat figures, in Limoges w^ork of the thirteenth century 
 (26, 41, 42). 
 
 It will be found, that where in champleve the figure 
 is in bronze upon a coloured ground, the enamel does 
 not always come up to its outline, but stops short of 
 the engraved line, giving an extra margin of metal 
 beyond it. This Viollet le Due accounts for by sup- 
 posing the grounding out of the enamel to have been 
 done by an artisan who was instructed to stop within a 
 respectful distance of the line engraved by a superior 
 artist. That might appear so in rudely executed work 
 like that on page 76, supposing the figure draughtsman's 
 outline to be worthy of such respect; but in the casket 
 
75 
 opposite (43) it will be seen that the double line, a 
 device continually employed by designers to give fulness 
 to a design, has a very definite artistic use. Moreover, 
 the extra line was not necessary to the preservation of 
 the artist's drawing ; for he had only to engrave his 
 outline deep enough, and the veriest mechanic could 
 keep to it. The difficulty of the merely mechanical 
 workman would be (and evidently was) in drawing aline 
 of his own outside it. 
 
 Champleve enamellers seem to have felt the want of 
 something like cloisons to break up large areas of colour. 
 It was a local, not a general, custom to break up masses 
 of enamelled ground by little dots or other diaperings 
 
 44. FOURTEENTH CENTURY CHAMPLEVE CLASP, LIMOGES. 
 
76 
 
 45. CHAMPLEVE ENAMEL, LIMOGES, IN THE CHURCH OF BELLAC. 
 
 in the metal, such as occur in thirteenth century West- 
 phaHan work. These, like the rosettes on the back- 
 ground to the figures in the French work on page 75, were 
 reserved, not merely for ornamental purposes, but in order 
 to give hold to the enamel. The device was constructively 
 the equivalent in champleve to diapering with cloisons. 
 
 The difference between German and French champ- 
 leve is more in design than in technique, though the 
 Rhenish artists made greater use of blended colour 
 (Chapter XVI I.) . In both countries it was the practice 
 to reserve ornament in bronze upon a coloured ground ; 
 but, whilst in Germany the scroll, varied though it 
 was in pattern, w^as Byzantine or Romanesque in cha- 
 racter (23), in France it was more Eastern-looking, 
 especially as to its terminal floriation, in shaded colour, 
 of an almost Persian type (45). 
 
 The bronze in Gothic work was thickly coated with 
 an amalgam of gold and mercury fixed in the fire, 
 
77 
 though it is now in many cases almost entirely worn 
 away. Occasionally there is some compensation for its 
 loss, where, for example, in Limoges work, the metal 
 has been worked over with ornament which alone retains 
 the gilding in its punctures, so that we get a delicate 
 pique pattern in bright gold upon the dull brown bronze. 
 In other mediaeval instances as well as in Celtic and 
 more or less barbarian bronze-work that was not gilded, 
 the metal has taken a fine green patina, which gives in 
 some instances exceptional charm to the enamel colour 
 embedded in it. In Chinese work, for the most part 
 cloisonne, the gilding has stood very much better. The 
 mercury process is, of course, superior to water gilding 
 and to the more modern electro-gilding, by which last 
 a very thin film of gold can be deposited. 
 
 Champleve, though it stands for bronze-worker's 
 enamel, was not, of course, confined entirely to bronze. 
 
 46. THE LYTE JEWEL, ENGLISH, EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
78 
 The method was used also by gold and silversmiths when 
 it suited their purpose. There was a very characteristic 
 form of Renaissance goldsmith's work decorated with 
 arabesque in gold upon white ; and a more rigid and 
 spidery form of Louis XIII. ornament, also on white, 
 and very effective in its queer way, was introduced by 
 Jacques Hirtu. The back of the Lyte jewel (page "]"]) 
 is distinctly reminiscent of designs by Hirtu. The form 
 of the ornament is strangely sudden ; but, when the 
 contrast is only between white enamel and glittering 
 gold, it justifies itself entirely. 
 
 Jaipur enamel, for the most part in translucent ruby 
 and emerald colours upon a white ground, is outlined 
 with a fine gold line, which at first sight suggests 
 cloisons. It is really champleve, in which very shallow 
 cells for the enamel have been chased out of the solid 
 but exceptionally pure, soft, twenty-two-carat gold. The 
 same thing was done in other parts of India. 
 
 There is in the Victoria and Albert Museum a 
 beautiful specimen of seventeenth century Lucknow work 
 (a bottle with white flowers and opaque grey-blue leaves 
 upon a translucent ground) in which the gold, rather 
 cloison-like outline is, again, the surface of the vessel 
 upstanding between the beds of enamel. In Persian 
 work, too, there occurs a fine gold wiry outline, which 
 is similarly got by chasing. 
 
 " Niello " must not be confused with enamel. It 
 was employed by Byzantine, Celtic or Anglo-Saxon, 
 and mediaeval workmen, sometimes in association with 
 enamel ; but it is really more nearly akin to damascen- 
 ing than to enamel ; for, though it is champleve and 
 fused, it is not vitreous, but compounded of lead, 
 silver, copper, sulphur, and what not. The metallic 
 character of niello makes it peculiarly appropriate to 
 the decoration of metals ; and, being fired at a high 
 
79 
 temperature, it is more permanent than most enamel 
 colours. There seems, however, to be no very good 
 reason for using the two together. It may be a safer 
 way of filling up fine lines of engraving ; but lines that 
 are too fine to be enamelled have a way of looking rather 
 out of accord with the rest of the work, apart from any 
 difference of texture there may be between substances 
 essentially different. The reason of the use of niello in 
 Italian work was, no doubt, to get the character of 
 pictorial engraving — a quality much better appreciated 
 on white paper than on bright metal. 
 
 In German coppersmith's work of the twelfth and 
 thirteenth centuries (in the Gewerbs Museum at Cologne, 
 for instance) we meet with gilt ornament on a brown 
 ground which one would suppose at first to be champleve. 
 The Germans call it " Braun-email" ; but it is neither 
 enamel nor champleve. According to Ferdinand 
 Luthmer, the brown is nothing more than a coating of 
 linseed oil upon red copper, charred in the kiln to a 
 deeper or lighter tint of brown, according to the depth of 
 the coating and the degree to which the copper colour 
 consequently grins through. And that is what it looks 
 like. It is quite plain, too, that the gilt ground has 
 not been sunk and filled in with enamel : the pattern 
 has not the sharpness of cut metal ; and where it has 
 worn away, it is patent that it is only gilding, much 
 in the manner of the later Venetian enamel, though 
 the design, of course, is very different. This sort of 
 " encaustic," which was practised on the Rhine and 
 Maas, in Westphalia and Hesse, has proved to be 
 almost as lasting as true enamel. Like niello, it is burnt 
 on ; but it is no more metallic than it is vitreous. 
 
 Another kind of work commonly confounded with 
 champleve enamel is the filling in of coloured brasses 
 
So 
 with what is called "mastic." This may be regarded 
 as a sort of sham enamel, though the inlaying of wood 
 and marble with coloured mastics, more or less in 
 imitation of inlaid marble or the like, dates back to a 
 period far more remote than the use of enamel. It was 
 no new thing to inlay metal with colour ; the only fresh 
 departure was to employ vitreous colour and to fuse it. 
 Mastic is a term so indifferently used for any resin, 
 varnish, mortar, or cement, that it can hardly be said 
 to describe a definite substance ;. but it may be safely 
 
 47 QUASI-ENAMEL, PART OF A SUIT OF ARMOUR IN THE 
 KUNST HISTORISCHES MUSEUM AT VIENNA. 
 
8i 
 
 taken to indicate a stopping which, whatever it may 
 have been, was not vitreous. The so-called enamel on 
 mediaeval brasses is not fired in. The Germans call it 
 *' kalt Email." But " cold" enamel is a contradiction 
 in terms. The fact is that, except in the case of small 
 shields of arms or other separate pieces of enamel occa- 
 sionally affixed to it, the colour of a monumental brass 
 is not enamel at all, but only a cheap imitation of it. 
 It is quite probable also that the explanation of much 
 crumbling away of more ancient enamel colour, so 
 called, is simply that it also was not enamel, but 
 something much more perishable than even the softest 
 glass used by the enameller. However, by the six- 
 teenth century, armourers and others had so far 
 mastered the difficulty of fixing colour " cold " that 
 some of it is to this day perfectly well preserved. 
 
 The magnificent gala suit of armour in the museum 
 at Vienna, to which the helmet opposite (47) belongs, 
 could hardly have been in better condition if it had 
 really been enamelled. The pattern, which might have 
 been designed by Peter Floetner or Virgil Solis, is a 
 strapwork of black, vermilion, and gilt metal (the last 
 enriched with a pattern in slight relief) upon a white 
 ground ; the white background is diapered with subsi- 
 diary ornament in bright metal, rising ever so slightly 
 above the surface of the colour. An interesting point 
 in this is that the sinking of the ground has been done 
 by etching, a process seldom, if ever, used in enamelling 
 proper, though there is no reason why, for some pur- 
 poses of *' grounding out," acid should not just as well 
 be employed by the enameller as by his imitator. It is 
 a thoroughly workmanlike way of getting champleve, 
 and seems to offer opportunities of which no artist need 
 scruple to avail himself, when it suits his purpose. 
 
X. CHAMPLEVE AND CLOISONNE. 
 
 The ruder and clumsier look of champleve gives one 
 always the impression that it must have been the more 
 primitive method. 
 
 By all historical accounts it was not so. If we look 
 upon enamel as derived from encloisoned jewellery and 
 glass, there is no doubt that was as old as ancient 
 Egypt. But setting aside Egyptian enamel, of which 
 we have little sure evidence, and Greek, which seems 
 to have been done, so far as it was done, either way, 
 the first cloisonne that we know of was Byzantine, 
 centuries earlier, it is true, than Gothic champleve, but 
 possibly centuries later than the earliest Celtic work, 
 which was champleve. 
 
 Apart from enamel on metal, champleve (or, as a 
 carver would call it, '* grounding out ") was in use from 
 it is difficult to say how far back. On the one hand, 
 it is more than doubtful if there was ever any enamel in 
 the cells, which look as if they might have been made 
 to receive it, in old Egyptian goldsmith's work ; on the 
 other, there is no doubt whatever that at about that 
 time they used to fuse vitreous colour into a bed of clay, 
 soapstone, or whatever would stand the fire. 
 
 Cloisonne is, in the first place, the work of 
 goldsmiths, and of men working in comparatively 
 thin metal, which almost compels the process of 
 building up walls to make cells for the enamel. The 
 strips of metal set on edge for this purpose, naturally 
 thin, equal in width throughout, and wiry, are used 
 
83 
 
 48. DETAIL OF CHINESE CLOISONN^, OF THE MING PERIOD. 
 
 G 2 
 
84 
 
 in great profusion. The method invites elaboration. 
 Design is consequently full and rich, covering the 
 surface ; the colour is divided and broken up by fine 
 lines of metal, which give it the appearance of being 
 shot w^ith gold. Cloisonne ordained a system of design 
 in which every detail was outlined with metal, and 
 colour was separated from colour by a fine line of it ; and 
 the use of the metal line for drawing within the area 
 of a single colour w^as a natural development from it. 
 
 The effect of the method upon design is seen no 
 less in Chinese (48) and Japanese than in Byzantine 
 and mediaeval cloisonne (49, 29). Champleve is the 
 work of coppersmiths, or of men working in solid 
 metal, which of itself suggests the digging of trenches 
 in it for the enamel. There would be no temptation to 
 dig out more of the ground than w^as necessary ; and, the 
 value of the metal as a foil to the colour being patent, 
 the obvious thing w^as to leave parts of it bare, enriched 
 only by chasing or engraving. The process suggested 
 not only broad surfaces of metal, but thicker lines than 
 cloisons gave, not of even thickness throughout, and 
 more vigorously alive than the lines naturally taken by 
 bent wire. Champleve lent itself to silhouette, not 
 outline, and to designs in metal upon colour or in 
 colour upon metal ; and it is not surprising that its 
 tendency is constantly towards the heraldic practice 
 of avoiding colour on colour. And, whether in Celtic 
 or mediaeval. Renaissance or Indian w^ork, the influence 
 of the method upon design is apparent. One can 
 usually guess the process from the design. Where the 
 contrast is between colour and colour, separated by 
 outlines of gold, we expect cloisonne; where it is 
 between colour and metal surfaces, we expect champ- 
 leve — not but what appearances are sometimes 
 deceptive ! 
 
85 
 
 49- DETAIL OF BYZANTINE 
 
 CLOISONNE (see 22). 
 
 Cloisonne and champleve 
 amount in the end to much 
 the same thing. They are both 
 ways of enclosing enamel, of 
 embedding it in the metal and 
 keeping it in place, and that 
 more securely than is possible 
 in incrusted enamel, notwith- 
 standing the success of later 
 enamellers in that way. That 
 there are artistic compensations 
 for the restraint imposed upon 
 the artist by the necessity of inlaying his colour, no 
 one with the remotest appreciation of decorative design 
 will be disposed to deny. There is a beauty in 
 cloisonne and champleve yet to be surpassed, if it is 
 to be equalled, by a more painterlike method of 
 work. 
 
 Repousse (page 91) is not far removed from champ- 
 leve. It is only another way of digging troughs for 
 colour ; it is as natural a thing to do when you are 
 working in thin gold or silver, as chiselling out when 
 it is solid bronze or brass you are using. 
 
 Although in a sense it may make no diiference 
 whether the necessary metal barrier between colours 
 is beaten up, or cut out, or soldered on, it does 
 affect the design. Identical effects may be produced 
 in various ways. As a matter of fact, they seldom 
 are, though a new process generally begins by imitating 
 the old one. Each method suggests, when the work- 
 man is at home in it, the thing to do — the thing that 
 is least wasteful of material (to say nothing of time 
 and temper), the thing most surely effective, most 
 certain to come right, most characteristic, most 
 workmanlike, and, in a word, proper to it. 
 
86 
 
 And so whoever works in cloisons comes to rely 
 upon the Hne of gold they give, and makes much of it. 
 He does not use it merely as an outline : he threads his 
 colour with it, indulging to his eye's content in delicate 
 elaboration and minute detail. 
 
 Working in precious gold, the Byzantine craftsman 
 showed his respect for it by leaving bare a portion of 
 his plaque as background ; working in baser metal, 
 the Chinese enameller covered his vase with ornament 
 (50), relying upon the cloisons at once to define his 
 forms and to soften his colours. 
 
 So the worker in champleve follows the track in 
 which he finds no unnecessary barriers to artistic 
 expression. He soon gives over imitating wirework, 
 and his line acquires a character of its own. He, too, 
 leaves bare a fair amount of metal, whether in the 
 form of pattern upon colour (40) or of background to 
 design (28), but with a purpose of his own. It would 
 entail great labour to ground out ornament all over it ; 
 and, seeing that metal may with advantage be used as 
 a foil to colour, it is clearly not worth while. Plain 
 metal asks for enrichment, and so he engraves or 
 chases it, with the result that the patterned metal 
 ground forms quite an interesting feature in his work, 
 and the metal surfaces give a breadth to the design 
 which is not easy to preserve in cloisonne The value 
 of the metal as a foil to colour, and of relief as a 
 contrast to the smoothly polished enamel, was felt also 
 by the Chinese, who, even in connection with cloisonne, 
 used dragon and other forms in high relief. The dragon 
 on the neck of the vase opposite is a much happier 
 instance of applied relief than is often to be found in 
 Mediaeval Gothic work. 
 
 Cloisonne (together with repousse) was so plainly the 
 process of the goldsmith, and champleve the process of 
 
87 
 
 50. CHINESE CLOISONNE VASE, I573 — 1619. 
 
the bronze-worker, each acting on the hint of the 
 material he was working in, that, supposing it not to 
 have been practised before, champleve must eventually 
 have come about, if only through the desire to produce 
 works of greater size than was possible in a rare 
 metal like gold. With the use of bronze there was 
 bound to come the method appropriate to it. The 
 bronze-worker may have begun by imitating the gold- 
 smith ; but imitation is never more than second best ; 
 to rival him he had to do something of his own ; and 
 the direction pointed out by his material was the only 
 one in which he could hope in turn to take the lead. 
 
 It is at once an artistic and a workmanlike satis- 
 faction to those who know, to see in work done no 
 matter how evidence of the way it was done, and to 
 note the effect of an artist's method upon his design ; 
 and it is a source of corresponding disappointment 
 when it reveals nothing of the kind, or tells us that he 
 had no more intuition or initiative of his own than to 
 imitate effects proper to some other technique. The 
 man may have accomplished a "tour de force," but there 
 is small consolation in that. 
 
 An artist is the best, the only judge, one may say, of 
 his own object and how to effect it. There will be 
 occasions when, for example, it will answer the purpose 
 of a worker in cloisonne to solder on strips or plates of 
 metal which may suggest champleve, or when a worker 
 in champleve may have occasion to use lines which 
 suggest cloisons. It would be the narrowest of bigotry 
 to abstain, because of a belief in one method of proceed- 
 ing, from the employment of others which would serve 
 the occasion better. An artist will use the surest means 
 to his end ; but he will also, failing any special reason 
 to the contrary, abide by the craft of his choice, for 
 better, for worse. 
 
89 
 The description of cloisonne as the goldsmith's 
 method must not be taken to imply that it could not 
 be adapted to work in bronze, but only that to the 
 first workers in bronze champleve offered the readier 
 solution of their difficulties. They did, of course, use 
 
 /:rT^ 
 
 51. FIFTEENTH CENTURY HISPANO-MORESQUE CL0IS0NN6. 
 
 cloisonne too (51). As for the Chinese (48, 50), and 
 after them the Japanese, they found it no less practically 
 possible than artistically expedient to work almost 
 exclusively in cloisonne upon bronze. How they came 
 to adopt a practice so different from that developed in 
 the Middle Ages by European craftsmen is an inter- 
 esting subject of speculation. The Japanese, working 
 
90 
 upon thin metal, were compelled to some such practice ; 
 but the Chinese more often cast their vessels, which 
 were accordingly thick enough for champleve, had they 
 cared to use it. Were the Chinese by any chance 
 more expert than the Limoges enamellers in soldering 
 a hard metal like bronze, or had the Chinese instinct 
 towards fuller pattern, more easily elaborated in wire- 
 work, anything to do with it ? We may rely upon it 
 that out of two ways of keeping his colours apart a 
 competent craftsman would adopt the more expedient. 
 It would be with him a question partly of what was 
 practicable and partly of the artistic purpose in view — 
 though this last is a consideration which would not 
 affect the artist of old time quite in the same way as 
 it touches us in these days of fully developed indivi- 
 dualism. The manner of the ancient craftsman was not 
 so much the way of his choice as it was the way of 
 craftsmanship. That is how traditions of workmanship 
 came to be built up. 
 
52. PLAQUES OF REPOUSSE ENAMEL FROM AN ELEVENTH CENTURY 
 BOOK COVER IN THE TREASURY OF ST. MARK's, VENICE. 
 
 XI. REPOUSSE. 
 
 To mention early enamel is to recall to most of us 
 cloisonne and champleve. But those were not the 
 only processes employed of old by gold and copper- 
 smiths. From a very early date they worked also in 
 repousse. 
 
 Cloisonne itself was used from the first in connection 
 with beaten work. The early Byzantine practice was 
 to punch down in a thin plate of gold the area to be 
 occupied by the figure, and, within the shallow trough 
 formed in this way, to build up in flat wire cells to 
 keep the enamel colours asunder. The silhouette was, 
 that is to say, repousse, and only the details were drawn 
 in gold wire. This was so in the case of the plaques in 
 the crown of Charlemagne, and again in those of the 
 crown of Constantine Monomachus at Buda-Pesth, in 
 which the scrollwork patterning the gold ground is 
 also beaten down to receive the colour, without aid of 
 cloisons, excepting in the little birds amongst it, which 
 are cloisonne. The figures in this instance are not 
 quite flat, but very slightly convex, rising, that is to 
 say, in the centre slightly above the gold ground. 
 
92 
 This looks as if the enameller, instead of attaching 
 his cloisons to the bed of the trough he had beaten 
 down, had made separate httle trays of cloisonne, which 
 he had let into the hollows (or they may have been 
 piercings only) and soldered in. Kondakow mentions 
 that as a Byzantine practice. It is significant that in 
 this instance the depth of the beaten cells forming the 
 scroll is only about half the depth of those formed by 
 the cloisons in the figures. 
 
 The spaces for the figures in the Pala d'Oro at 
 St. Mark's are beaten down on a plate of plain bur- 
 nished gold, sparingly relieved with ornament, and 
 some of the nimbuses are outlined with a fillet of 
 colour, the trough for which is beaten down, whilst 
 a pattern on it is cloisonne. 
 
 In the Imperial Treasury at Vienna there is a sword 
 scabbard of Sicilian workmanship in which a strap- 
 work pattern is produced by repousse, and the ground 
 space is filled up with cloisons so delicate as to look 
 like hair lines of gold dividing the opaque colours. 
 
 Both at the Louvre and in the Gewerbs Museum at 
 Vienna there is enamel which has the appearance of 
 champleve, and is only perceived to be beaten work 
 because in places the enamel has fallen out and laid 
 bare the workmanship. 
 
 In the little plaques from a Gospel cover in the 
 Treasury at St. Mark's at Venice (52) the pattern is 
 simply beaten down in silver and filled in with trans- 
 lucent colour. There is some very similar work in 
 the museum at Vienna, where the back of a throne 
 on which the Madonna sits enthroned is faced with 
 thin silver, wrought with depressed pattern filled in 
 with what looks like white enamel. This, which is 
 described as '' West European work," may possibly 
 not be enamel. 
 
93 
 
 In the unique and remarkable specimen below, the 
 
 so-called "Demetrius Tafel" in the Gewerbs Museum 
 
 at Vienna, a very different and much more elaborate 
 
 effect of colour is produced. The enamel is here no 
 
 53. THE •• UKMETRIUS TAFEL IN THE GEWERBS MUSEUM AT 
 VIENNA, REPOUSSE ENAMEL. 
 
 longer buried in the cells, but stands up above the 
 gold almost in the form of drops ; and it has ^een 
 fused a polish. The white looks like the " enamel " of 
 the human tooth. The effect is such that it is difficult 
 at first to believe that the little jewels of colour are 
 
94 
 not actually lapis lazuli and other semi-precious stones. 
 Examination leaves no doubt that they are enamel set 
 in little sockets beaten up to receive it. The drapery 
 of the saint and probably the horse he is riding were 
 once enamelled also ; but only the wreck of the colour 
 remains, notwithstanding that the ground for it has 
 been carefully tooled over to give it hold. It should 
 be mentioned, by the way, that the remaining patch 
 of flesh tint upon the neck is of a rosy shell colour, 
 nowhere else that I know of to be found, which seems 
 to anticipate by some hundreds of years the use of gold 
 as a colouring matter in enamel. 
 
 Again, in Oriental work the cloison-like divisions 
 between the colours are sometimes beaten up. But 
 the more common Eastern practice was to beat down 
 the ground and fill in with colour, leaving the metal 
 surface to form the pattern. When this has been 
 afterwards engraved, it is difficult sometimes to believe 
 that the work was not done entirely with the graver. 
 The work of Kashmir forms, together with that of 
 Hyderabad, almost a "genre" by itself. The pattern 
 in silver, copper, or whatever it may be, is much the 
 same whether the ground for the blue and green 
 enamel is cut out or hammered down ; and it is in 
 many cases only by the evidence of the back of the 
 work, or of the inside of the vessel, that we can 
 be sure which way it was done. Repousse seems 
 to have been the more usual method ; but without 
 closer inspection than glass cases allow it is never safe 
 to say what is repousse and what is not, and in the 
 descriptive (?) labels of many a museum it all goes by 
 the name of champleve. No wonder people do not 
 realise the part played by beaten work in enamelling ! 
 
 Repousse was employed to its most obvious purpose 
 in designs (chased perhaps) in which the ground was 
 
95 
 
 54- DETAIL OF REPOUSSE AND CHASED ENAMEL BOX BELOW. 
 
 sunk in order to give the pattern relief. Colour, of 
 course, emphasised it still further. In Kashmir work 
 the ground, instead of being all of one colour, is com- 
 monly filled in such a way as to give value to certain 
 features in the pattern. 
 
 Each process led to the development of a style ot 
 design more or less begotten of it, though in the first 
 instance it may have been only a means of getting 
 an effect produced by some other method already in 
 use, and was in that case naturally in imitation of it. 
 
 Early mediaeval champleve 
 often suggests cloisonne, 
 and Indian chasing suggests 
 at times both cloisonne and 
 repousse. 
 
 In the Chinese box 
 55. CHINESE BOX (coMP. 54). shovvu ou this page the 
 
96 
 
 ornament is beaten up into comparatively high reHef 
 and chased, and the ground filled in with translu- 
 cent blue enamel. A very interesting and suggestive, 
 but rather unusual, specimen of eighteenth centur}' 
 Chinese art is illustrated on page 97. The main lines 
 of the design, it will be seen, are beaten up from the 
 ground of the vessel, and within that cloisons are 
 introduced to give detail, such as the petals of the 
 flowers (in which, by the way, the colours are blended). 
 The enamel is in this case not ground down, but left 
 as it came from the kiln, " fire-polished " ; and it is all 
 the more beautiful in that it is not quite flat, but 
 slightly convex in surface. It gains something, too, 
 from being all raised slightly above the surface of the 
 vase. According to Dr. Bushell, whose word should be 
 enough, repousse has superseded champleve in modern 
 Chinese enamel. 
 
 In French work of the Louis XVI. period, orna- 
 ment, in gold of different colours, upon a ground of 
 translucent blue or green, was constantly chased in 
 relief. 
 
 An ancient alternative to champleve and repousse 
 by which aliio the shallow cells required for enamel- 
 ling were easily produced was to fret the pattern 
 (or its ground) out of one sheet of gold and solder 
 it on to another. The curious little plaque (58) from 
 the eleventh century reliquary of Pepin of Aquitaine 
 belonging to the church of Conques, but obviously not 
 made for the place it occupies, has every appearance of 
 having been executed in that manner. It gave sharper 
 lines than repouss^, and had, in fact, very much the 
 effect of champleve, which, as we have seen, when it 
 came to the use of baser metal not so well worth 
 saving, naturally took its place. 
 
 This device must not be confounded with another. 
 
97 
 producing a somewhat similar effect, which was practised 
 in Rajputana. There are two accounts given of the 
 way this Indian work was done. According to one, the 
 jeweller shaped a piece of gold and soldered a gold 
 wire round the edge, so converting it into a little tray ; 
 this he filled with red or green enamel ; and whilst it 
 
 E. 
 
 56. REPOUSSfe AND CLOISONNE VASE, CHINESE. 
 
 H 
 
98 
 was still soft he pressed into it another thin plate of 
 gold fretted into a design ; he submitted it to the fire 
 again, to fuse all perfectly together, and, when it was 
 cold, engraved the surface of the gold. According to 
 the other, it was the tray itself which was first engraved 
 and fretted. This was pressed down on to a piece of 
 shaped glass softened by heat, submitted once more to 
 the fire, and finally backed with silver foil. The two 
 processes amount in the end to much the same thing ; 
 but the last mentioned connects it more closely with 
 glass-working, with the practice of the barbaric bronze- 
 workers referred to on page i8, and perhaps that of the 
 Greek goldsmiths suggested on page 14. 
 
 Stamping and casting are processes that have also 
 been used by enamellers. It has been suggested by De 
 Radios that the outlines of the figures in the crown of St. 
 Stephen at Buda-Pesth were stamped out in a mould. It 
 does not follow from the recurrence of the same silhouette 
 that this was quite certainly the case. Repetition might 
 mean only economy of design, similar to that practised, 
 for example, in thirteenth century stained glass, where 
 the same effigy stands sometimes for various saints. 
 Elsewhere, however, and later, stamping was certainly 
 used. In Multan they make, according to Sir James 
 Watt, small ornaments in what looks very much like 
 cloisonne, but is really blocked out by means of dies. 
 Some Chinese work is also said to have been cast. 
 
 There is in the Germanic Museum at Nuremberg 
 what seems to be a German version in silver gilt of a 
 French leather bookbinding of the time of Henri II. 
 Presumably it has been stamped in one of the dies which 
 were made at that time for embossing leather; but, if so, 
 the flat strapwork, which is a feature in such designs, 
 has been slightly pressed down from the edges, so as to 
 form shallow troughs to hold en?Lmel colour. 
 
99 
 
 57- ENAMELLED CAST BRASS CANDLESTICK, 
 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 ENGLISH, 
 
 H 2 
 
lOO 
 
 Casting was also used, it seems, in Russian work ; 
 and there are some brass stirrups in the Wallace 
 collection which were certainly cast. It is especially 
 in brass-work that casting has been used, for example 
 m the candlesticks, andirons, and other roughish mid- 
 land English work of the seventeenth century (57). And 
 why not ? In some cases it would be rash to say without 
 close examination that it had not been employed as a 
 basis for work that has been subsequently chased. 
 
 There seems no very good reason why ^' Basse TailW 
 (see Chapter XII.) should not be stamped in; and the 
 circumstance that there are old plaques "enamelled 
 on relief" of identical design points to some such 
 mechanical means of reproduction. 
 
 58. DETAIL FROM THE RELIQUARY OF PEPIN OF AQUITAINE 
 IN THE CHURCH OF CONQUES. 
 
XII. "BASSE TAILLE.' 
 
 Translucent colour was a survival of Byzantine tradi- 
 tion. But the Byzantine manner was cloisonne. It is 
 only by exception that the colour in early mediaeval 
 champleve is translucent ; and where it does occur, as, 
 for example, in the bowl of the Hispano-Flemish chalice 
 in the Louvre (overleaf), it is strangely suggestive (it 
 may be by association only) of Eastern work. The 
 foot of this chalice is in the fourteenth century French 
 manner. 
 
 Translucent colour opened out quite new possi- 
 bilities, which were seized upon by later Gothic 
 enamellers. It was in itself such a temptation to go 
 further than opaque enamel allowed, that the onward 
 step was inevitable. It led to quite a different form of 
 art. 
 
 In digging out the trenches for his colour, the 
 engraver naturally got an uneven surface. To smooth 
 it would have been difficult ; and it was not necessary, 
 for the roughness gave grip to the enamel. When it 
 was found that the broken ground of gold or silver 
 gleamed through translucent colour and brightened it, 
 craftsmen were quick to make artistic capital out of the 
 discovery. 
 
 The French enamellers of the eighteenth century 
 habitually engraved their gold, with veiningor the like, to 
 give shimmer to the colour of leaves and flowers, or, in 
 the case of geometric diaper, to break the monotony of 
 a sapphire or emerald background. Indian craftsmen 
 
102 
 
 59- HISPANO 
 LEVfe TRANS 
 
 FLEMISH CHAMP- 
 LUCENT ENAMEL. 
 
 did much the same thing a century at least before that. 
 There is no denying the value of the play of light pro- 
 duced by discreetly chasing the ground of the already- 
 mentioned Jaipur and Lucknow goldsmiths' work, pre- 
 paratory to putting on the enamel. And, short of this 
 deliberate waking up of the colour by careful engraving, 
 the mere inequality of surface which comes of "grounding 
 out" the pattern is an asset of considerable value in art. 
 That is apparent in any translucent champleve in which 
 the ground of the enamel has not been laboriously made 
 even and uninteresting (60). Some very characteristic 
 work, dating from about the beginning of the seventeenth 
 century, was done at Lucknow. It is in translucent 
 
103 
 sapphire and emerald, with perhaps also 
 deep red and some turquoise, upon a 
 plain silver or silver-gilt ground, very 
 much in the manner employed by the 
 Augsburg silversmiths of the latter half 
 of the sixteenth century. And, curiously 
 enough, there is something about the 
 rather Persian design of it, with its long- 
 tailed exotic birds perched amidst con- 
 ventional foliage, which recalls the pat- 
 tern-work of Theodor de Bry, who was, 
 if not the designer of the Augsburg 
 work, at least the model upon whom 
 its designers founded themselves. This 
 German work was used to great effect 
 by David Altenstetter or Attemstetter, 
 notably in the cup in the museum at 
 Gratz, famed as the Augsburg cup, and 
 by Christopher Angermaier, who made 
 splendid decorative use of enamelled 
 silver plaques introduced by way of 
 panels into some remarkable ivory 
 cabinets now in the National Museum at 
 Munich. A rather later specimen of 
 similar work upon gold is given on 
 page 105. French work of the kind was 
 more often upon gold, and, like the 
 German miniature case, on a rather 
 smaller scale. Black and white entered 
 also into the colour scheme. 
 
 There is in all this work gradation of 
 tint sufficient for most purposes of orna- 
 ment. In design of more pictorial charac- 
 ter engraving had long before this been 
 carried to a much further point. It is clear 
 
 ^^J 
 
 60. INDIAN 
 
 KNIFE 
 
 HANDLE. 
 
I04 
 that, apart from the sparkle given by an uneven ground, 
 the colour, since it was in the enamel, would show richer 
 in deep troughs, where the enamel lay thick, than in 
 shallow ones, where there was less of it. There was a 
 hint in that no artist could neglect. Why not engrave 
 or chase with a view to gradation of colour ? It was a 
 simple matter to dig deeply into the metal where the 
 colour was to be full, and less and less deeply in pro- 
 portion as it was to be lighter, until a bare film over the 
 shallowest possible engraving only just prevented the 
 very highest lights from showing pure gold. 
 
 That is how, when the translucent enamel was 
 ground down and polished, they arrived at what is called 
 enamel en basse taille — in other words, engraving or 
 chasing upon gold or silver with the purpose of show- 
 ing gradation of colour, that is to say translucent 
 champleve, in which the strength of the colour was 
 relative to, and in fact corresponded with, the depth of 
 the engraving or chasing. 
 
 Some such development as this is so natural an 
 outcome of conditions, that there is no saying precisely 
 when first deliberate use may have been made of deeper 
 cutting to get greater depth of colour; but the evidence 
 all points to Italy as the birthplace of the idea of making 
 use of engraving to get shading in the translucent colour. 
 It soon penetrated into l*>ance, however. It has been 
 suggested that one of the popes may have brought it 
 with him to Avignon. At all events, it is at Montpelier, 
 and not at Limoges, that we first hear of it in France. 
 It was practised in Italy upon silver throughout the 
 fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and its invention is 
 ascribed to John of Pisa as early as the year 1286. He 
 was responsible for the famous silver altar at Arezzo. 
 
 " Basse Taille "has been described as the effort of the 
 modeller to get in enamel the expression of relief. It 
 
los 
 
 6l. TRANSLUCENT i^. ■ ENAMEL ON GOLD, 
 GERMAN, SEVEN- |_: -^ TEENTH CENTURY. 
 
io6 
 is inherently nothing of the kind, though it was, no 
 doubt, carried to a point at which it becomes a sort of 
 low relief. It is, properly speaking, not so much model- 
 ling as painting with the graver. The ground is engraved 
 only for the purpose of getting colour gradation. Every 
 stroke of the graver stands for a touch of colour. This 
 is so far from being a sculptor's or modeller's work, that 
 either craftsman would have to unlearn his habitual 
 practice before he could accommodate his treatment to 
 the purpose in hand. It is a great mistake, therefore, 
 to make much of the plastic character of " Basse Taille." 
 The process grows naturally out of the natural desire of 
 the enameller to get gradation of colour ; and it is for 
 the beautiful gradation of colour to be got by it, and not 
 for any appearance of relief it may give, that it is 
 artistically valuable. It was a way of doing in trans- 
 lucent colour something like what the twelfth century 
 worker in opaque champleve did, more clumsily, by 
 blending his enamel colours (Chapter XVII.). 
 
 The pictorial ambition of the enameller finds its 
 highest expression in works such as the so-called " Cup 
 of the Kings of France and England " in the British 
 Museum. That is a rare and very remarkable work of 
 the end of the fourteenth century. But if writers on art 
 are agreed to extol it as a work of art, it is because they 
 are more interested in pictorial than in decorative art. 
 It is very much what an illuminator of the period would 
 have done, and an illuminator more concerned about 
 his picture than about the page he was decorating. 
 
 The attitude is one more excusable in an illuminator, 
 who may have regarded himself more as an illustrator 
 than as a decorator, than in a goldsmith; and the truth 
 is, this very clever graver's picture does not decorate 
 the cup ; it hardly seems to belong to it. If the artist 
 had only left here and there so much as a line of 
 
^old amidst the colour, it would have helped to con- 
 nect his picture with its gold ground ; it would have 
 strengthened the work, and given force to his drawing : 
 but he was bent on picture ; and what pictorial success 
 he achieves is at considerable cost of that decorative 
 quality to which enamel owes so much of its charm. 
 One can imagine figure work in " Basse Taille" threaded 
 with cloison-like lines, binding it to a gold ground itself 
 sufficiently relieved by colour, and frankly recognising 
 the fact that this sort of painting is really no less 
 goldsmiths' work than are cloisonne and repousse. 
 For, however painterlike the effect, it is got by the 
 engraver's means of hollowing out. It is that which 
 gives variety of tone, according to the depth of the 
 translucent enamel, just as in photogravure the light 
 and shade of the picture are according to the depth of 
 the etching and the quantity of ink contained. 
 
 There is a little piece of enamel in the Bargello 
 (described as of the sixteenth century, but more like 
 fourteenth century work) in which the translucent blue 
 ground is diversified by little five-petalled flowers, no 
 bigger than a pea, in translucent yellow, which shows 
 deeper towards the eye, and exposes the clear gold only 
 on the outer edges of the petals. It is as if little con- 
 cave flowers had been fixed to the ground with a pin 
 (forming the eye of the flower) and filled in with 
 translucent yellow. 
 
 In some of the French goldsmith's work of the eigh- 
 teenth century at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs there are 
 paler blue stars upon the dark blue ground — underlying 
 stars of silver, I take it, upon which the translucent blue 
 shows paler and greyer (see " Paillons," page 154). 
 
XIII. WIRE ENAMEL, UNPOLISHED. 
 
 It has already been explained how in cloisonne and 
 champleve the cells were filled and refilled nntil the 
 enamel came well up to the surface of the metal, so that 
 it could be ground even and polished. There is, no 
 doubt, a satisfying effect of finish about the smooth 
 surface of mediaeval champleve or Chinese cloisonne 
 enamel. More than that, in translucent Byzantine 
 work and in "Basse Taille " the polish brings out the 
 quality of the colour ; and in any case a uniform 
 texture is pleasant to the touch. But there is a pleasin<^ 
 quality also in the surface of enamel which has not been 
 ground down to a level face. The undulations in it 
 catch the light as an even plane does not. It has a 
 liquid look. The slight shadow from the walls of the 
 cells helps the colour ; and in many respects the eifect 
 compares more than favourably with that of an 
 absolutely flat surface. 
 
 In the little sixteenth century German casket 
 opposite (62), the colour certainly loses nothing from 
 the fact that it lies in hollows below the level of the 
 cloisons, which in this case, as it happens, are of 
 the flat tape wire ordinarily used in cloisonne. (The 
 same sort of thing occurs in seventeenth century 
 champleve both in silver and in gunmetal, for example 
 in Spanish work.) 
 
 An equally satisfactory effect is produced where the 
 enamel rises up, as it were in thick drops, above the 
 setting. There lives in my memory a piece of old 
 
I09 
 Chinese work in which the rounded surfaces of red enamel 
 stand out from the metal, as though it were incrusted with 
 coral after the manner of some seventeenth and eigh- 
 teenth century Neapolitan goldsmith's onlay, which, by 
 the way, was sometimes associated with white enamel. 
 In the flowers upon the Chinese vase (page 97) the 
 
 62. GERMAN CLOISONNE NOT FILLED UP WITH ENAMEL. 
 
 enamel, slightly convex above its boundary wires, has 
 a beautiful surface which a glass-blower would call *' fire- 
 polished." It took a master of his trade to do that. 
 He must have known his material thoroughly and have 
 had perfect control over it. It was not only the natural 
 desire to get an even surface, smooth to the touch, 
 which suggested grinding and polishing, but practical 
 
no 
 expediency also. The piling on of enamel and grinding 
 it down to a face that could be polished was a much 
 rougher and readier process. 
 
 63. OLD JAPANESE CLOISONNE NOT FILLED UP WITH ENAMEL. 
 
 As a rule, however, unpolished enamel lies, for 
 obvious reasons of economy and labour-saving, below 
 the surface of the enclosing wire or whatever it may 
 be. The disc above, from the under-side of an old 
 Japanese cloisonne bowl, which has had no more than 
 one filling of enamel colour, not only shows what 
 cloisonne enamel looks like in the unfinished condition, 
 
64. RUSSIAN TWISTEP WIRE ENAMEL. 
 
112 
 
 but suggests a process which deliberately stops short 
 of the usual practice. One can imagine how a man 
 who in the act of enamelling in the orthodox manner 
 arrived at a result like that might say to himself, 
 " HuUoa ! here is an effect worth aiming at ! " and so 
 begin a new custom, if not altogether a new method. 
 
 In the Chinese butterfly on page 212, which is in 
 silver, and evidently not meant to be carried further, 
 we see that the idea of not filling up the cells has been 
 definitely adopted, as it was in Russian and Hungarian 
 work (64 to 68). 
 
 But there is another obvious way in which enamel 
 outlined with milled or twisted wire may have come 
 about. No one who has looked at jewellery with 
 observant eyes can have failed to notice the affinity of 
 cloisonne enamel to filigree work. This is more than 
 ever apparent when the cloisons are not flat tapes of 
 
 65. HUNGARIAN WIRE ENAMEL, NATIONAL, MUSEUM, 
 BUDA-PESTH. 
 
113 
 metal set edgewise, but of the wire ordinarily used in 
 jewellery. 
 
 66. RUSSIAN WIRE ENAMEL. 
 
 The common practice of Byzantine gold and 
 silversmiths, from the sixth century onwards, was 
 to set precious stones en cabochon in raised sockets 
 connected by spiral ornament in twisted wire or coarse 
 filigree. This is very much the kind of thing we find in 
 Hungarian and Russian wire enamel. In filigree the 
 interstices between the wires are, in fact, cells all but 
 ready for enamel. They have only to be taken into 
 
 E. I 
 
114 
 consideration in the design, and schemed so as to make 
 enclosures (more or less) for separate colours, and the 
 groundwork of wire enamel is there. 
 
 Strictly speaking, some of the very earHest enamel 
 that we know is wire enamel. The tiny flowers, for 
 example, which we find in Greek work (5) are outlined 
 with gold wire so fine as to be inconspicuous; and, as 
 in the case of wire enamel on a bolder scale, the colour 
 
 67. RUSSIAN WIRE ENAMEL. 
 
 does not fill the cells, shallow as they are, but "only 
 covers the bottom of them. 
 
 It seems strange that, considering the antiquity ot 
 filigree, cloisonne enamellers should first have used flat 
 wire and not filigree. And it is curious also, and 
 not without significance, that in mediaeval Limoges 
 the champleve lines are sometimes punched with a 
 pattern which is plainly reminiscent of milled or twisted 
 
 wire. 
 
 One of the characteristics of Sicilian work, of which 
 
T5 
 
 68. DETAIL OF HUNGARIAN WIRE ENAMEL, SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 I 2 
 
ii6 
 there is quite a representative collection in the Treasury 
 at Vienna, is the use they made of a sort of minute 
 filigree pattern in certain portions of the work, flooded 
 over, as it were, with colourless or yellow flux. Bock 
 refers to little quatrefoils of gold wire embedded in the 
 enamel. This filigree is of wire only about half the 
 depth of the cloisonne generally, and the enamel, not 
 coming up to the general surface, is, of course, not 
 polished with it. 
 
 Luthmer makes a great point of the difference 
 between Byzantine enamel and Russian and Hungarian 
 work, in that in the one the wires are on the same sur- 
 face as the enamel, and in the others they stand up 
 above it. In this Sicilian work the minute filigree 
 referred to is in slight relief; but, whether the enamel 
 is level with the wire or not, the initial operation is 
 the same ; and the mere stopping short of a perfected 
 process does not amount to a new technique. What if 
 the one kind of work is in flat wire, and the other in 
 milled or twisted wire ? What if in the one the cells 
 are filled up, and in the other they are only partly 
 filled ? What if in the one the enamel is ground to a 
 face and polished, and in the other it is left as it came 
 out of the fire ? What if the one was employed largely 
 in picture work, and the other entirely in ornament ? 
 It is in every case cell-work, and the cells are of wire. 
 
 The decorative use made of wire enamel in Russian 
 and Hungarian art is characteristically national : that 
 is something to be proud of ; but to claim that it is an 
 altogether independent art seems to be a misdirection 
 of patriotic self-glorification. In effect, no doubt, the 
 results of Magyar and other wire enamel are very 
 different from those of ordinary cloisonne. We are 
 reminded by it less of Byzantine or mediaeval enamel 
 than of appliqu^ embroidery. The most casual observer 
 
117 
 must, one would think, have been struck at times by its 
 resemblance (64, 66) to that kind of needlework in which 
 onlays of different-coloured stuffs are outlined with gold 
 cord, couched down, to cover and clean up the joints. 
 The wire stands up in just about the same relief ; it is 
 often twisted, after the manner of a gold or silken cord; 
 and it is used, like the couched cord (singly or doubled), 
 to form the golden stalks of coloured leaves and flowers. 
 Of course we have already in Byzantine enamel con- 
 ventional flowers and leaves (in opaque colour on a 
 translucent ground) growing from stems represented by 
 
 69. HUNGARIAN WIRE ENAMEL WITH FRETTED GROUND. 
 
 gold cloisons ; but the suggestion of embroidery in this 
 wire enamel is really obvious ; and when it is remem- 
 bered that there is in the Waddesdon Room at the 
 British Museum a silver-gilt cup enriched with actual 
 pearl embroidery on cloth of gold, it will hardly seem 
 fanciful to say that **wire enamel" looks like a trans- 
 lation of applique embroidery into enamel. Typical 
 examples of twisted wire enamel occur on pages iii, 115. 
 Variation in the colour of the ground (page 113) occurs 
 frequently in Hungarian work. Often the pattern 
 is entirely in filigree upon a ground partly in one colour, 
 partly in another. 
 
ii8 
 
 The wirework in the section of a chalice foot shown 
 on page 115 has much less the air of enclosing than of 
 being embedded in enamel, especially when it comes to 
 actual tendrils, the coils of which rise well above the 
 twisted stalks and outlines of the leaves. It would be 
 difficult to find a more expressive example than this of 
 the kind of line which comes of bent wire. As for the 
 berry shapes, it will easily be understood how, by the 
 simple device of winding wire closely round a circular 
 spit of steel (like the string on a bat handle) and then 
 ripping up this casing, the coil would fall to pieces in 
 just such little rings. The enameller has not taken even 
 the trouble to join them up. In the same way, other 
 simple forms can easily be shaped ready for use as 
 leaves, flower petals, or other forms of ornament. 
 
 A common practice in Hungarian jewellery was 
 to fret away the ground of the design decorated in 
 cloisonne enamel, and to attach the fretted metal to a 
 plate of a different metal — that is to say, silver on gilt 
 or gold on silver (page 117). Something of the same 
 sort occurs in Venetian work of about 1600, and in the 
 German casket on page log. You can see in the detail 
 on page 119 the rivets which attach the open enamel 
 to the metal plate backing it. The difference in level 
 between the ornament and its backing and the slight 
 shadow cast by the fretwork upon the ground add to 
 the effect. There is in the Gewerbs Museum at Berlin 
 some seventeenth century German cloisonne on a silver 
 ground punched with small holes, which give it the 
 appearance of silver net ; and in the British Museum 
 there is some seventeenth century unpolished champleve 
 in silver, not unlike cloisonne in appearance, the ground 
 of which is not enamelled, but delicately punched over 
 to give it texture. 
 
 An Eastern device constantly employed in sixteenth 
 
119 
 and seventeenth century Hungarian work was to make 
 a fretted holder for a metal cup. That on page 51 is of 
 wire cloisonne ; in other cases it was champleve. The 
 same sort of thing occurs in Turkish and in some 
 Indian (Lucknow) work, and in seventeenth century 
 Russian enamel. 
 
 A charming effect is produced in a sixteenth century 
 watch-case by not only fretting away the ground, but 
 tying the fretwork of enamel together with what a 
 lace- worker would call *' brides " of gold. These have 
 
 70. DETAIL OF GERMAN CASKET ON PAGE ICQ. 
 
 a very lacelike look over the silver under-case seen 
 through them, though they are champleve. 
 
 There are two varieties of wire enamel characteristic 
 of two different periods. In the first the wirework is 
 only by way of outline and enclosure to the enamel, as 
 on pages iii, 115; in the other there is associated with 
 it also filigree of the usual kind, bare of colour. In 
 Hungarian jewellery of the seventeenth century filigree 
 plays sometimes an even more important part than 
 enamel; and when, as often happens, the wire enamel 
 is literally planted on the filigree work, applied, as it 
 were, in jewels (page 120), the effect is very far re- 
 moved indeed from ordinary cloisonne. But whether 
 it is the enameller who makes use of filigree or the 
 
20 
 
 71 HUNGARIAN FILIGREE AND WIRE ENAMEL 
 
 filigree worker who makes use of enamel, the pro- 
 cess is inherently the same, and always a variety of 
 cloisonne. 
 
 That this kind of thing is not confined to Hungary 
 and Russia is witnessed by a Chinese vase in the Vic- 
 toria and Albert Museum in silver-gilt filigree, with 
 medallions of cloisonne enamel. And, indeed, we detect 
 in Hungarian and Russian work a distinctly "Eastern" 
 look. Hampel objects to the word Eastern that it is 
 indefinite; but it is better to be indefinite than inexact. 
 The fact is, we do not very definitely know the source 
 of this art ; but anyone can see that there is in its 
 design something which is certainly not of Western 
 oriojin; and "Eastern" expresses, however vaguely, that 
 vague something. 
 
 The quasi-Oriental character of Russian and Hun- 
 garian enamel is probably due to immediate intercourse 
 with the East ; and racial intermixture may have 
 something to do with the sympathetic adoption of 
 Eastern ornamental methods; but even this is matter 
 of speculation. What we do know positively is that 
 wire enamel, as we find it, is subsequent both to filigree 
 and to cloisonne. It is the sort of thing which might 
 have occurred to any filigree worker coming in contact 
 with enamel, or to any enameller coming in contact 
 with filigree ; and with either it would have been a 
 
121 
 
 matter not of choice but of necessity to leave his work 
 unground and unpoHshed, except by the fire. 
 
 The workman's ideal is perfect finish. An enameller 
 regards the little pits in the surface of his work (air 
 bubbles burst in the process of polishing) as flaws. So 
 they are. And, in so far as a highly polished and 
 speckless surface signifies perfect fusion of the enamel, 
 it is the guarantee of good workmanship. It is 
 technically a fault in old Chinese work that it is so 
 pitted with air-holes. The Thibetan work (whether 
 done by Chinese workmen at Lhassa or in China to 
 the order of Thibet) is rough to a degree hardly to 
 be excused as finish. From the point of view of 
 artistic effect there is, however, something to be said 
 for it. An even surface is not everything ; and the 
 glassy face of Chinese cloisonne, as offered to us by the 
 dealers, is due, they say, to a final " furbishing up " in 
 this country. 
 
 A high polish, it is contended, has helped to pre- 
 serve the ancient enamel which remains to this day in 
 good condition. Is it not rather to the perfect vitrifica- 
 tion which allows high polish, than to the polishing 
 process, that we owe its preservation ? 
 
 Anyway there is a beauty in enamel not speckless, 
 not highly polished, and, for that matter, not polished 
 at all, except by fusion. 
 
72. HUNGARIAN PAINTED CLOISONNE ENAMEL. 
 
 XIV. PAINTED CLOISONNE. 
 
 It is convenient to describe Byzantine enamel as 
 cloisonne, mediaeval as champleve, and so forth, as 
 though at one period only one method had been 
 practised. As a matter of fact, it was quite usual for 
 two processes to be employed concurrently, and in the 
 same piece of work. Repousse was used in conjunction 
 with Byzantine cloisonne, cloisonne with mediaeval 
 champleve, and both champleve and repousse with 
 Chinese cloisonne. 
 
 We cannot even draw a hard and fast line on the one 
 side of which are cloisonne and champleve, and on the 
 other \s painted enamel (Chapter XIX.). Jewellers did 
 not hesitate to supplement "cell" work with painting. 
 Hungarian and Russian goldsmiths of the sixteenth 
 and seventeenth centuries constantly did so, with the 
 object, it is plain, of qualifying a tint which did not go 
 well with the rest. They would have preferred perhaps 
 to use only jewel-like colours ; but such colours were 
 not forthcoming in the desired variety ; and failing a 
 translucent enamel of the colour required, they had to 
 put up with an opaque one. Light blue is a case in 
 point. The pale opaque blue produced by the admix- 
 ture of tin was, however, so totally out of relation to 
 
123 
 
 translucent surroundings that something had to be 
 done to keep it down. A simple means of doing this 
 was by tracing black lines upon it ; and they had the 
 wit to break up the surface of aggressively opaque 
 colours with black, so that they showed only in com- 
 paratively small pattern-work. In the buckle, oppo- 
 site (72) some of the lobed leaves are plain ; those are 
 in translucent colour. Others are broken up with 
 detail ; those are in opaque colour. The painter has 
 used his black just as a thirteenth century glass painter 
 used opaque brown, to define the detail of his more 
 minute conventional leafage. 
 
 You will find in seventeenth century Russian work 
 green hatched with black, and yellow with red ; but 
 delicate leafy or arabesque pencilling was the more 
 satisfactory way of reducing the colour. White was, 
 of course, in its naked statie, even a greater shock to 
 the eye than opaque colour, and it was customary to 
 veil it with red or black, as the case might be. The 
 tulips below (73) are traced in red. There were various 
 ways of breaking the white : by feathering at the edges 
 (72) ; by veining ; by dots and spots of red. Or the 
 petals of a flower, first laid in in white, would be 
 painted red, except for a margin left clear all round 
 them. In Russian work you may meet with cloisonne 
 
 73. HUNGARIAN PAINTED WIRE AND FILIGREE ENAMEL 
 
124 
 
 upon a white ground with additional leaves simply 
 traced in red upon the white. 
 
 A compromise between the use of opaque and of 
 translucent colour was, to glaze white with a film of 
 yellow or turquoise. In that case the colour might 
 either be put on flat or shaded off into the white. 
 In sixteenth century work, and especially in seven- 
 teenth century Hungarian jewellery, flowers were 
 tinted, shaded, and pencilled, so as to give as nearly 
 
 74. PAINTED WIRE ENAMEL, GEWERBS MUSEUM, BUDA-PESTH. 
 
 as might be the effect of the natural flower. The tulips 
 on page 123 are treated somewhat in this way. 
 
 In Jaipur enamel of a century or so ago (which, by 
 the way, was chased or champleve), the ornament is in 
 translucent colours, but the animals in its midst are 
 first laid in with white and then elaborately painted to 
 give the fur or feathering of the little creatures. 
 
 In the Persian enamel (or some of it) which looks so 
 much like floral illumination, the white ground upon 
 which roses and other flowers are painted is not, as one 
 might think, a flat layer of tin enamel. Close inspection 
 

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 75. PAINTED CLOISONNE, NATIONAL MUSEUM BUDA-PESTH. 
 
126 
 
 shows fine lines of gold following more or less the 
 outline of the flowers ; from which it appears that it is 
 really in cells, chased out of the gold. The flowers in 
 the panels of the pipe-holder opposite are champleve, 
 filled in with white, and traced with red or blue and 
 black, to distinguish them from the white ground. 
 
 There seems no very good reason why colour should 
 be spotted with white, as it sometimes was; and the 
 seventeenth century experiment of dotting translucent 
 green with white, or black with white and pale yellow, 
 or a middle colour with both black and white, has not 
 proved very successful. 
 
 Champleve, or rather " Basse Taille " (for there was 
 always chasing or engraving under the translucent 
 colour, either as a sort of conventional veining to the 
 leafage or by way of diaper upon the ground), was almost 
 invariably supplemented by painting in the exquisitely 
 finished snuff-boxes, watches, " etuis," and other trifles 
 in fashion at the court of Louis XVI. The leaves of 
 the flowers were usually in translucent green or blue ; 
 the flowers themselves were in white, slightly raised 
 above the surface of the metal, and painted with the 
 red of the carnation, the blue of the forget-me-not, 
 and so forth. The effect, in its pretty little way, is 
 charming. The idea of figure subjects, champleve 
 upon a gold ground, filled in with white, and then 
 painted in colours, does not work out happily. 
 
 Another unsatisfactory combination of enclosed 
 and painted enamel occurs in an eighteenth century 
 Chinese vase in the British Museum. It is of the usual 
 cloisonne character, with medallion panels of painted 
 enamel, in one case a blue dragon on a yellow ground 
 outlined in white, in the other pink flowers with green 
 leaves on a greyish white ground. The incongruity of 
 the result almost sets one's teeth on edge. 
 
127 
 
 76. PERSIAN PAINTED CHAMPLEVE PIPE HEAD. 
 
128 
 
 A mixture of methods is of such common occurrence 
 that it can hardly be called the exception to a rule. 
 And one method may come so timely to the help of 
 another that there is every temptation to adopt it. We 
 may have a prejudice in favour of playing a very strict 
 game, we may realise that a certain unity of effect is 
 secured by the use of one only method, and yet 
 acknowledge the artist's entire freedom to employ 
 whatever process comes conveniently to his hand. 
 Unless the results are incongruous no objection can be 
 taken to his use of a multiplicity of methods; and 
 then all that the objector can say is that he has failed 
 in artistic discretion. 
 
XV. *'PLIQUE A JOUR." 
 
 Translucent enamel reaches the furthest possible 
 point of translucency in what is known as ** plique a 
 jour," which might almost be described as the addition, 
 not so much of glass to metal as of metal to glass. 
 
 It may be either cloisonne or champlev^. In the 
 latter case it is simply a fret of metal in which the 
 pierced parts are glazed with enamel. In either case the 
 metal cells have no bottom, and the light shines, as it 
 were, through stained glass in miniature, which, in fact, 
 it is. Enamel of this description is a sort of window 
 work, in which, supposing it to be cloisonne, filigree of 
 wire takes the place of the lead glazing in mediaeval 
 glass, or, supposing it to be champleve, fretted gold or 
 silver takes the place of the pierced plaster-work into 
 which in Eastern architecture the little bits of coloured 
 glass were stuck. In the fifteenth century cup in the 
 Victoria and Albert Museum illustrated overleaf (77) a 
 band of more or less scroll-like "plique a jour " orna- 
 ment is broken by two diminutive three-light Gothic 
 windows glazed in enamel. 
 
 " Plique a jour " has its equivalent also in pottery. 
 There is a form of Chinese porcelain and of porcelain- 
 like Persian earthenware in which the clay, whilst in a 
 half-dry condition, is pierced with pattern, usually more 
 or less geometric; the glaze clogs the perforations, 
 and when fused fills them in with a stopping of trans- 
 lucent glass, which gleams slightly greenish against the 
 white of the denser ware. As the incisions happen to 
 
 E. K 
 
I30 
 
 f^y^m^j^j^j/j^u^mM^oiyuimmm' 
 
 ^*^^ff^s^ 
 
 77. "PLIQUE A jour" enamelled CUP, FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
131 
 
 be commonly something like a grain of rice in shape, 
 the French have given this kind of decoration the rather 
 foolish name of "grain de ris " ; and we have rather 
 foolishly adopted it in this country. 
 
 The resemblance of perforated porcelain to " plique 
 a jour" enamel is more striking still when, as in some 
 modern French porcelain shown at the Paris Exhibition 
 of 1900, the piercings are filled in with various bright- 
 coloured glazes. 
 
 Early examples of " plique a jour " are very rare 
 Perhaps the earliest known is in the crown of 
 St. Stephen (it boasts a pedigree from 1072), which 
 has a cresting enriched with scalework in translucent 
 emerald. The manner has been brought to some 
 technical perfection in Russia and in Scandinavia. 
 Indeed, this open work goes sometimes by the name of 
 Russian enamel. The effect of it is really wonderful. 
 It strikes you, the first time you see it, as little short 
 of marvellous. But the whole secret of it is in getting 
 enamel of the right consistency, viscous enough to 
 hold on to the metal at the edges (as a soap bubble 
 
 78. DETAIL OF " PLIQUE A jour" CUP (77). 
 
 K2 
 
132 
 
 would), not so fluid as to flow free when it is partially 
 melted. Tlie operation is made easier by the use of a 
 temporary backing of metal foil. This gives for the 
 time being a bottom to the cells, and can be removed 
 when the enamel (or the first coat of it) is hard. 
 
 " Plique a jour'' is a natural sequel to the practice 
 of framing together precious stones, which, genuine or 
 not, showed to advantage when set " open." The cup 
 of Chosroes in the Bibliotheqtie Nationale at Paris 
 may be regarded as foretelling it. It was sure to come 
 about as soon as the enameller had control enough 
 over his material to get, at a relatively small cost, 
 something like the colour, if not the effect, of very 
 costly jewellery. 
 
 A possible origin of enamel unsupported by any metal 
 backing is suggested by the discovery (I forget where I 
 saw it) of a thin plate of silver enamelled on both sides, 
 a portion of which had given way in the firing, and 
 showed there clear enamel. An enameller might very 
 well have made a trial upon a piece of silver which 
 happened to have a hole in it. If, when it came out of 
 the kiln, he found this coated with glaze, as very likely 
 he might, he would naturally push his discovery further ; 
 a vision would flash before him of jewels of light caught 
 in a mesh of golden wire ; and the realisation of his dream 
 would be only a matter of persistent experiment. 
 
79- INCRUSTED ENAMEL. 
 
 XVI. INCRUSTED ENAMEL. 
 
 " INCRUSTED " is a term that has been used by different 
 writers to mean very different things. It is necessary, 
 therefore, to explain the sense in which it is here used. 
 Whatever enamel is put upon metal may, strictly 
 speaking, be said to incrust it. But we have already 
 well-defined terms for most of the processes employed 
 by the enameller. It seems to me, therefore, as well 
 to reserve the term " incrusted " for the method of 
 coating raised and modelled goldsmith's work with 
 colour which is neither entrenched, like champlev^ and 
 cloisonne, nor painted, like the Limoges work, upon a 
 practically flat foundation. 
 
 It is the impulse of the natural man to kick against 
 limitations, however wise it might be of him to accept 
 them. Goldsmiths would, no doubt, from the first 
 
134 
 have painted their work freely if they had been able. 
 But they could not do without some sort of troughs or 
 cells for the colour. The Greeks used their colour very 
 much as though it were paint of the ordinary kind; but 
 it was bounded by a fine line of gold wire. Kondakow 
 
 80. FIFTEENTH CEN- 
 TURY silversmiths' 
 
 WORK, THE FLOWERS IN- 
 CRUSTED ALTERNATELY 
 WITH WHITE AND TRANS- 
 LUCENT RUBY ENAMEL. 
 
8l. SILVER ENRICHED WITH OPAyUE AND TRANSLUCENT ENAMEL. 
 
 gives a very interesting diagram to show how the 
 Byzantine enameller, when he wanted to cover a com- 
 paratively large surface, used shallow cloisons hidden 
 from sight only by the last coat of enamel, which, 
 having something to hold on to in the already firmly 
 secured enamel below, could safely be carried over 
 them. 
 
 The earliest specimen of incrustation I have seen 
 is on the '' Demetrius Tafel " (page 93) ; but it has not 
 lasted well : only a remnant of the shell-pink clings 
 to the neck of the saint. 
 
 In the fourteenth century goldsmiths acquired more 
 mastery over their colour, and by the sixteenth they 
 seem to have been able to do pretty much what they 
 wanted with it. They did really wonderful things. 
 
136 
 carrying technique to a point of rather trivial perfection 
 in Httle bunches and bouquets of metal flowers most 
 exquisitely painted in the colours of nature. A larger 
 treatment is shown in the spray of goldsmith's work on 
 page 133. Not only in the fifteenth century, as in the 
 red and white roses on page 134, but in the best work 
 of the Renaissance, French or ItaHan, no matter where 
 it was done, there is usually an edging of gold to the 
 colours, as also in the Hungarian jewellery on page 135, 
 so delicate as hardly to be seen. And where it is not 
 to be seen, nearer inspection would very likely show 
 a line of gold, however fine, which was enough to 
 prevent any overflow of enamel. The colour has in 
 some cases spread over the shallow outline, and more 
 or less buried it. 
 
 In the Venetian mirror frame in the Louvre made 
 for Marie de Medici {circa 1600) the colours are edged 
 with a fine line of gold. In earlier work there are very 
 often little spots or stars of gold or silver, little islands 
 of metal in the colour, the real purpose of which is to 
 afford moorings for the enamel. 
 
 They seem in the sixteenth century to have had no 
 difficulty in incrusting relief work with enamel, and some 
 of it has lasted well. A chased surface naturally gave 
 better hold than a smooth one. But the only sure 
 way of getting deep colour that would hold was by 
 successive coats of thin enamel, each fused by a 
 separate firing. 
 
 From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century abun- 
 dant use of white enamel was made in jewellery as a 
 foil to translucent colour. It was used in that way in 
 the border of the Lyte jewel (page yy). It occurs also 
 in little pearls more or less upstanding. Sometimes it 
 is used as a ground for other colours. Very often it is 
 broken up with black, either in the form of pattern-work 
 
82. DETAILS OF ENAMELLED JEWELLERY IN THE NATIONAL 
 MUSEUM AT BUDA-PESTH. 
 
83. NINETEENTH CENTURY JAPANESE SILVERSMITH'S 
 WORK, THE FLOWERS INCRUSTED WITH TRANS- 
 LUCENT AND OPAQUE ENAMEL. 
 
139 
 or of veining and hatching. There is on a Louis XIII. 
 locket in the Louvre a pattern of flower-work in relief, 
 all in white with a very fine gold outline, the hollows 
 filled in with an umber colour most pleasing in effect. 
 There is sometimes in incrusted enamel a wash of 
 colour upon the white. Other opaque enamels are 
 also used, as grey, blue, mauve, and pale green ; but 
 they are tame in comparison with translucent colours, 
 to which the chasing of the ground gives extraordinary 
 brillianc}'. 
 
 A beautiful effect is produced in the Japanese vase 
 opposite (83), in which the flowers are distinguished 
 from the leaves, all in raised work, by enamel colour 
 for the most part translucent. 
 
XVII. BLENDED COLOURS. 
 
 The blending or shading of colours begins already 
 in Byzantine work. It occurs, for example, in the 
 background to engraved metal figures in the portable 
 altar of Eilbertus in the Gewerbs Museum at Vienna, 
 which is shaded from green to blue and from purple to 
 white. In Gothic work it is usual enough, more so, 
 however, in the thirteenth than in the twelfth and 
 eleventh centuries. The German enamellers were 
 particularly addicted to it, shading off one colour 
 as gradually as they could into another — blue, for 
 example, through green to yellow, through grey-blue 
 or turquoise to white— whereas in Limoges the change 
 of colour was more often quite sudden, as, for example, 
 from red to blue. 
 
 The endeavour to get an intermediate shade between 
 two colours by mixing them together, or to lighten a 
 colour by shading it off into white, is not always very 
 successful in early work. The particles were often not 
 melted into an even colour, but only fused together, so 
 as to give a granular effect. That is very frequently to 
 be seen in the intermediate shades between manganese 
 purple and white, which are nearly always granular in 
 appearance, especially in twelfth century work. In the 
 Geoffrey Plantagenet panel at Le Mans, belonging to 
 the latter half of the twelfth century (opposite, 84), the 
 palest shade of blue proves on close inspection to be 
 made up of pale blue and white, and the paler green of 
 green and yellow. There is no possible mistake as to 
 
84. GRAVE PLATE OF GEOFFREY PLANTAGENET, NOW 
 IN THE MUSEUM AT LE MANS. 
 
142 
 
 the way in which the blue and green were reduced by 
 the addition of white and yellow. 
 
 In the De Valence casket opposite (85) the colour of 
 the rampant lion is a speckled mixture of blue, red, and 
 some white particles. There is, again, a figure in the 
 museum at Troyes — it was shown at Paris in 1900 
 — in which the purple drapery resolves itself on 
 close inspection into grains of dark blue and sealing- 
 wax red. These are doubtless instances of making the 
 best of it. The enamellers would have dissolved the 
 colours into a tint if they could ; but they had the wit 
 to take advantage of the fact that hard colours would 
 not blend into one, and to make artistic use of the speckle 
 which resulted from the separate particles. 
 
 They used them also to suggest, if not to simulate, 
 marble. There is a twelfth century plaque in the 
 Victoria and Albert Museum by Godfrey de Clair in 
 which the speckling of red, green, and white upon a 
 column between two figures was certainly intentional ; 
 and there is just such another dappled pillar in the British 
 Museum, described as twelfth century Rhenish, which 
 is probably by the same hand. In the Verdun altar at 
 Klosterneuburg, again, use is made of a broken turquoise 
 blue which looks like intentional marbling. 
 
 When by chance one colour " stains out " into the 
 next the transition from one to the other is made easy ; 
 but this softening effect seems only to have happened 
 by chance. It is rather odd that so little advantage, 
 if any, seems to have been taken of a happy accident 
 of this kind. 
 
 It is in the shading of drapery that the greatest use 
 was made of tints not separately entrenched. There was 
 often a line of lighter colour on one side of a fold, as if a 
 narrow trench had been scraped out next the metal and 
 filled in with a paler tint, or it might be with white. 
 
( 
 
 
 143 
 
 
 
 • " III \Msm ' \ 
 
 
 
 1''%. -.^v 
 
 
 
 
 11 
 
 
 
 
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 ^J^'^IU^' 
 
 ^'"■? *, 
 
 W. 
 
 ■•^' #V^--r.^'-v*r!^35^^^- 
 
 ^^■fiSSSS^^^ 
 
 P^ 
 
 
 1,. %'>' ^-*^.y' ..^^v*^".'^'- ^ _ irm i imii 
 
 85. DETAIL OF HERALDIC CASKET, LIMOGES. 
 
 Similar lines of relatively light colour mark sometimes 
 the lesser folds without the support of metal on one 
 side of them (86). Gradation or other change of colour 
 occurs also in ornament. The rather Persian-looking 
 terminal foliations of the metal scroll peculiar to 
 Limoges are usually illuminated with colour shading 
 off to white (45) ; and the little discs or spots on the 
 ground, which are a feature in rather late work, are 
 usually coloured in rings (26). 
 
 Dots of red on green, blue on red, or, more often, of 
 white on colour, are common both in Limoges and 
 Rhenish enamel. They are for the most part rather 
 irregular in shape, at times, indeed, so blurred in outline 
 as to form, properly speaking, rather patches than 
 definite dots of colour. They are, in fact, of just that 
 
144 
 indeterminate shape which would result from making 
 depressions in the paste with, say, a pointed stick, and 
 filling them with enamel of another colour. The pro- 
 cess of scratching out lines whilst the paste was in the 
 right condition and filling them up with paste or powder 
 of another colour, already referred to apropos of drapery 
 folds, was carried further still, as, for example, in some 
 German work at the British Museum, where a man's 
 blue hosen are diapered with a trellis pattern of red 
 cross lines forming diamonds, in the centre of which are 
 spots of white. This amounts to a sort of sgraffito. 
 
 There are in the Victoria and Albert Museum some 
 thirteenth century Rhenish champleve figures in which, 
 though the eyes are outlined with cloisons, there is no 
 dividing metal between the white of the eye and the 
 blue iris. 
 
 Dots of white on red and blue, and of colour upon 
 colour, without metal to separate them, occur again 
 in Gallo-Roman, Romano-British, and other work of 
 the late Roman period, which must almost certainly 
 have been done by the method of scratching out and 
 filling in above mentioned. 
 
 Certain very definite spots of, for example, opaque 
 yellow upon translucent blue or green in Irish work 
 (assuming it to be enamel and not glass), are not so 
 easily accounted for, unless they were engraved upon 
 the hard enamel, filled in afresh, and fired again. 
 
 Change of colour without intervening metal is some- 
 times introduced in a very knowing way. In French 
 work, for example, where the scroll is in metal upon a 
 blue ground, the little pointed spaces of ground between 
 the lobes of the trefoiled foliation are occasionally filled in 
 with red, in such a way as to become part of the pattern, 
 as though it were an afterthought when the ground- 
 ing out was already done. In rude English work the 
 
H5 
 colours are filled in rather casually. The black, white, 
 and green in the background of the candlestick on 
 page 99 are not always separated by the brass ornament 
 in relief. 
 
 86. TWELFTH CENTURY FIGURE BY GODFREY DE CLAIRE, 
 NOW IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 
 E- L 
 
146 
 The colours are most perfectly blended in the flowers 
 upon the Chinese vase on page 97. In Japanese work 
 also the colours are often blended (page 138). 
 
 A twelfth century Limoges shrine in the possession 
 of the Society of Antiquaries suggests an interesting 
 problem. There are in it some little half-discs shaded 
 from red through grey to white.. Fracture shows that 
 the red colour of the eye is continued under the grey, 
 but not under the white line round the rim. Was this 
 done by first piling up a little heap of red, filling in the 
 trench round it with grey, scratching out a line of white 
 next the rim, and filling that in with white ? There is 
 some red, green, and yellow shading which suggests a 
 similar proceeding. In each case the red falls under the 
 colour surrounding it and not under the colour next the 
 rim. Elsewhere in this same casket, where dark cobalt 
 blue has flaked off, tliere is red to be seen. I have 
 noticed the same thing in a casket in the Germanic 
 Museum at Nuremberg. It looks as if they had found 
 red a good colour for a first layer, with more affinity 
 for the copper, and helping, therefore, to bind the 
 other colour to it ; but the red may be only oxidization 
 after all. 
 
 Kondakow mentions in old work of Gallo-Rhenish 
 type from South Russia a comparatively thick bed of 
 red next the bronze, and on that thin coats of red, tur- 
 quoise, and orange ; but as on analysis this proved to 
 be red lead, it could not have been fired, and was not 
 enamel at all, but glass inlay. 
 
 In Egyptian work we find a cement very much the 
 colour of red lead as a base or bed for glass inlay into 
 pottery, and, I think, also in goldsmith's work. 
 
87- ENAMEL ON GLASS, BRITISH MUSEUM. 
 
 XVIII. ENAMEL *' EN RESILLE." 
 
 There are some forms of enamelling which, though 
 not upon metal, come strictly within the definition of 
 enamel, and seem to be more nearly related to enamel- 
 ling upon metal than to glass, porcelain, or what- 
 ever may be the ground upon which it is done. There 
 is no denying the title of enamel to the Japanese 
 cloisonne upon porcelain. It dates, according to 
 Bowes, no further back than i86g. At first it was upon 
 a green ground always, but afterwards upon turquoise 
 and other colours. The process employed was to embed 
 cloisons in the china clay whilst it was in a state neither 
 too dry to admit them nor too moist to hold them 
 upright, and then proceed to fill in the enamel in the 
 usual way, finally grinding it down to an even surface. 
 The enamel was soft, fired at a low temperature, 
 and consequently took but a dull polish. There is 
 theoretically a sort of consistency in decorating semi- 
 vitreous porcelain with wholly vitreous enamel ; but, 
 whether it is that we cannot help associating cloisons 
 
 L 2 
 
148 
 with a metal base, or because the white body, which 
 comes inevitably to the surface in the rim of the vessel, 
 glares at you in savage contrast to the dead colour, 
 somehow the effect is not satisfactory. 
 
 In Indian Mogul work we get enamel in imitation 
 of the rubies and emeralds which they inlaid into jade 
 and crystal. This, however, is not enamelling upon 
 jade or crystal, but inlay of enamel into it. The 
 enamel, that is to say, is contained in little pans of 
 gold, first fired, and then cemented into cavities 
 dug out for it in the stone. 
 
 Similarly the enamel upon *' mother-o'-pearl," of 
 which there are numerous examples in the museum at 
 Vienna, consists, of course, only of little jewels of 
 cloisonne upon gold or silver, riveted or otherwise 
 attached to its surface. Beautiful effects have been 
 produced in that way ; but it is not a very direct or 
 workmanlike one. 
 
 The negative, as it were, to this positive was a device 
 sometimes employed in Flemish work, in which a 
 design fretted in silver (it might be ornament ; it might 
 be figures in low relief) was fixed over a plate of metal 
 separately enamelled. The same kind of thing has 
 been done in modern English silversmith's work, and 
 the result is sometimes all that could be wished ; but it 
 bespeaks rather the silversmith who has no great con- 
 trol over his colour than the accomplished enameller : 
 it is not quite the strict game. 
 
 There is some relationship, if no very obvious 
 resemblance, between the Indian enamel inlay of 
 the Moguls and some work done by French gold- 
 smiths of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth 
 centuries, in which small objects of glass (for the most 
 part of dark opaque colour — when it was clear and 
 colourless it was called crystal) are decorated, more or 
 
149 
 less in the style of Etienne de Laune, with ornament 
 in translucent and opaque colours, outlined with gold 
 (87, 88). M. Fontenay thinks it was executed very 
 much in the same way. The rather roundabout 
 process of execution he describes is : — fretting the 
 ornament in gold, laying it face downwards, and 
 pouring on to it from the back a mass of molten glass, 
 to be pressed well into the interstices, then grinding 
 
 88. ENLARGED DETAIL OF "EMAIL EN RESILLE." 
 
 down and polishing the face, and digging troughs out 
 of the gold, to be enamelled in the usual manner. 
 That would certainly account for the result, which it 
 is interesting to compare with the method already 
 suggested (page 18) as having possibly been used in 
 some of the old Celtic bronze work. But a more 
 plausible suggestion is, that the bed for the gold was 
 cut out of the glass in its hard state. As to the gold 
 (it is plain, from its remaining in cavities from which 
 the enamel has fallen out, that there was a layer of 
 
ISO 
 gold between the glass and the enamel), it may have 
 been, as they say, an amalgam beaten solid and then 
 scooped out ; but a simpler process would have been to 
 press thick gold foil into the hollows, and so make a 
 lining for the enamel, the edge of which would be 
 enough to give the fine gold outline which, I suppose, 
 gives this work its French name, " email en resille." 
 
 There is no doubt that ornament was sometimes 
 engraved on hard glass or enamel and filled in with 
 gold. We have at the British Museum a little plaque 
 decorated entirely in gold arabesque which could only 
 have been done in that way. 
 
 The practice of fusing inlays of glass (or, as it might 
 be called, enamel) into glass is as old as ancient Egypt. 
 It is also within the competence of the enameller to 
 inlay enamel with enamel ; and, as was said, something 
 of this sort may have been done in Irish work. Again, 
 in the crown of Rudolf II. in the Treasury at Vienna 
 there is some white enamel with what looks like trans- 
 lucent champlev^ upon it. Close examination might 
 reveal a fine gold cloison between the white and 
 colours. If not, the pattern must have been engraved 
 in the white, and the parts dug out filled in with trans- 
 lucent colour. There is also at the Musee des Arts 
 Decoratifs at Paris some eighteenth century trinketry 
 in which are effects to be accounted for only by the 
 supposition that the ground of translucent blue enamel 
 has, after being fired, been minutely engraved and 
 filled in with green and red enamel. 
 
XIX. PAINTING IN TRANSLUCENT 
 COLOURS. 
 
 Painted enamel follows a comparatively even course, 
 and there is no longer any occasion to separate the 
 story of its progress from the description of the 
 processes through which it went. 
 
 The contention that Limoges was the birthplace of 
 early mediaeval enamel is now no longer very staunchly 
 upheld even by the French — the evidence is to the 
 contrary — but it was twice the centre of the enameller's 
 art, and the second time it was not only the focus, but 
 the source, of its revival. That is why it seems to me 
 advisable to reserve the term Limoges for the kinds of 
 enamel which unquestionably did arise in Limoges, and 
 in which the Limousins were supreme. 
 
 The new departure was essentially painter's, as 
 distinct from gold or coppersmith's, work. In fact, the 
 metal ground was to this kind of enamel what the 
 wood panel or the canvas upon which it was painted 
 was to an oil picture. 
 
 A variation upon the ordinary " Basse taille" method 
 (Chapter XII.) was, not to model the figures, but to en- 
 grave lines within the shallow colour troughs, to blacken 
 these (perhaps with niello), and then to fill up with 
 translucent enamel, through which they showed plainly. 
 It was but a step from that to painting black lines 
 instead of engraving and nielloing them ; and that was 
 in fact the next development of enamel. So we arrive 
 
152 
 
 at that first stage of painted enamel where the artist 
 filled in his outline drawing with translucent colour 
 much as a child colours an engraving. This method of 
 drawing the shadows in lines of dark and glazing over 
 them with the transparent local colours was perfected 
 by Nardon Penicaud, who, though not the inventor of 
 the new method (Molinier says it was practised as early 
 as the middle of the fifteenth century, and Nardon was 
 not born till about 1470), certainly carried it to per- 
 fection. Both Nardon and Jean Penicaud I. worked 
 in what may still be called the Gothic manner. 
 Nardon's colour has all the richness of stained glass ; 
 and there is significance in the fact that the Limoges 
 enamellers of this time were in many cases, if not 
 actually glass painters, brought up in the glass 
 painter's shop. 
 
 In the first rude examples of the new manner the 
 painting was perhaps done directly on the copper 
 ground. At the end of the fifteenth century the 
 practice was either (i) to scratch the outline of the 
 design upon the copper and then coat it with colourless 
 glass or enamel— flux, as it is called — upon which the 
 painting was done, or else (2) to trace the design at 
 once in black upon the flux. 
 
 In any case the painting began with the black or 
 dark brown outline, which when fired had some effect 
 in stopping the flow of the colours. In so far as it did 
 that, it took the place of metal cloisons. The enamel 
 was possibly stiffer than what was used before, and 
 not so fluid. It was kept from flowing by being put on 
 in layer after layer of thin colour, each of which had in 
 succession to be fired. That, of course, made it also 
 less liable to chip off in the cooling. The colours, for 
 the most part translucent, were then laid on with a 
 spatula. They did not usually melt into a quite flat 
 
153 
 
 tint, and a certain inequality of surface gave them a 
 liquid look which is anything but unpleasing. 
 
 Enamellers used by preference translucent colours, 
 eventually underlaying them with gold and silver to 
 enhance their brilliancy. The tints are not all equally 
 translucent; but they probably got them as clear as they 
 could. A sort of old-gold colour which occurs may be 
 either clear, colourless glass, or pale yellow, through 
 which, in either case, the copper shows : it is impossible 
 to say from the look of it which it is. Where only copper 
 colour was to be, a coat of clear glaze, or " flux," had 
 to be used. For want of a good translucent red, they 
 employed an opaque one, which stands up above the 
 rest of the painting just as the fine coral-coloured clay 
 does upon Oriental faience, and, like it, seems not to 
 belong to the translucent palette. 
 
 As early as the fifteenth century a little white 
 began to be used for high lights under the clear colour. 
 
 The work which one can still describe as mediaeval 
 (that of Nardon Penicaud, Jean Penicaud I., and 
 J. B. Penicaud, all done in the first half of the six- 
 teenth century) was very directly and vigorously, some- 
 times quite roughly, painted. It has nothing of the 
 smug look of Renaissance work. There are some six- 
 teenth century plaques, too, by Couly Nouailher, which 
 are refreshingly sketchy, quite glass-painter-like in the 
 rude freedom with which the lines are brushed in. 
 
 Of course the same care had to be taken with 
 painted as with goldsmith's enamel. The colours that 
 required the greatest heat to fuse them were first fired, 
 then the softer colours, and last of all those that would 
 stand comparatively little heat. 
 
 The brilliancy of translucent colour was clearly to 
 be enhanced by underlaying it with brighter metal. 
 Accordingly the practice was to insert between the 
 
T54 
 ground of flux (to which it adhered) and the colour 
 (which adhered to it) thin foil of gold or silver. This 
 was done at first with some reticence. Nardon Penicaud 
 used " paillons " (as these little bits of foil were called) 
 only as a backing for quite small jewels and so forth ; 
 and they sparkle in the borders of his robes like veritable 
 precious stones (89). Perhaps they even fused on little 
 morsels of coloured glass over the gold, just as the 
 glass-painters of the period fused larger jewels of 
 coloured glass on to the crowns and jewelled vestments 
 of the personages depicted in church windows. That, 
 by the way, would account for the ruby colour they 
 got, which might very well be copper ruby glass ground 
 down thin enough to give a paler colour than could 
 well have been got in copper red enamel. There is a 
 recently acquired plaque in the Cluny Museum (collec- 
 tion Wasset) in which a charming and rather exceptional 
 use of " paillons " is made in the foreground flowers. 
 
 Foil, however, soon began to be used in great pro- 
 fusion (90) ; and when in the sixteenth century all the 
 reds, browns, and yellows came to be underlaid with gold, 
 and all the blues, greens, and purples with silver, the 
 glory of the colour got a little gaudy. That, however, 
 was a later development, when painters like Susanne 
 Court and Jean Courteys pitched their colour so high 
 that it ended in being rather shrill. 
 
 What might be called a homoeopathic remedy for 
 this is to hatch or stipple the colour with gold, which 
 gives it a more lustrous and less tinselly appearance. 
 Touching the high lights with gold paint, just as the 
 shadows were got by lines of black, was the last paint- 
 ing operation. It was fixed by a much more moderate 
 fire than even the softest enamel colours required, pro- 
 bably with a coat of flux over it. This resort to gold 
 for the high lights is reminiscent of the use made of 
 
Sg. DETAIL OF TRANSLUCENT ENAMEL PAINTING BY NARDON 
 PENICAUD, CIRCA I5OO. 
 
156 
 the gilt metal in cloisonne and champleve. The 
 powdered gold was painted on with a pencil, very often 
 in the form of hatching and stippling, as by Nardon 
 Penicaud and his successors, as well as L. Limousin. In 
 portraiture the hair was often traced in fine gold lines, 
 and the background dotted or starred with gold (89). 
 
 But there was another way of working the gold. Once 
 applied, it was easy to scrape lines out of it and show 
 the black or colour underneath. This gave, of course, 
 black or coloured hues on gold. Gold lines on black 
 or colour were got by coating the gold (leaf gold 
 in this case probably) with enamel, and scratching 
 through that down to the gold. The needle point gave, 
 it need hardly be said, much finer lines than it was 
 possible to trace with a brush. This sgraffito, or 
 ** picking out," as it is also termed, was an old glass- 
 painter's trick: the Swiss window-painters carried it to 
 extraordinary perfection. Leonard Limousin employed 
 it to good effect, and so did Couly Nouailher. I remember 
 a subject of his in which certain figures in the back- 
 ground are, as it were, sketched with the needle point in 
 gold ; that is to say, gold shows through where the 
 black has been scratched away. We come also upon 
 sixteenth century portrait heads most perfectly modelled 
 in this way, the needle strokes all slanting from right 
 to left, producing very much the effect of a gold medal. 
 
 In flesh painting the enameller had to do with opaque 
 tin white, and it resulted in his using it in a very 
 characteristic way. The parts to be painted were first 
 grounded with dark colour, and on this the modelling 
 was done in body white. Thinly painted, it gave inter- 
 mediate tints, lighter or darker according to the solidity 
 of the white ; and it was possible to get very subtle 
 gradation of tint. Dark lines could be got by scratch- 
 ing through the white down to the ground. This 
 
157 
 " pate-sur-pate" painting might have to be repeated. If it 
 came out of the fire too dark, it had to be strengthened ; 
 if it came out too white and solid, it had to be ground 
 down and polished. But the flesh was always the least 
 satisfactory, as it was the most difficult, part of the 
 business. Nardon Penicaud generally painted upon a 
 black or blackish foundation, and his flesh tints are 
 
 90. TRANSLUCENT PAINTED ENAMEL. 
 
 uncomfortably cold. Eventually manganese purple 
 was adopted as the general ground tint for flesh, and 
 the grey pink it gives with the white is even less plea- 
 sant than the grey which came of working upon black. 
 Manganese, seldom or never pure, proved a treacherous 
 colour in the fire, and probably never came out just 
 as the painter would have chosen had he been its 
 master. A softer effect seems to have been got by 
 
158 
 a thin glaze of manganese after the modelHng was 
 done. And perhaps touches of white were painted 
 into this again. 
 
 The richer the colour the more glaring was the 
 discrepancy between it and the purple pink, cold grey, 
 or staring white of the flesh. In the astonishingly bril- 
 liant work of Susanne Court (that of the Courteys is 
 by comparison subdued) the splashes of white flesh 
 always challenge attention from afar. Witness the 
 " Apollo and the Muses " in the Waddesdon collection 
 at the British Museum. This white is so out of focus 
 that one can only suppose that the artist dared not tone 
 it down for fear of dimming the glory of her translucent 
 colour. It would have borne reducing, had she but 
 known it. The wonder is that she and her school did 
 not, seeing how glaringly raw the white was, manage 
 to do better another time. Is it possible they never 
 realised how aggressively the white flesh pushed forward 
 out of their colour compositions ? 
 
 The difficulty of flesh painting is got over in some 
 medallions in the British Museum (North Italian, circa 
 1480) apparently by painting first of all in grey upon 
 white, and then modelling this grey tint by scratched 
 lines, slanting all one way, through which the white 
 ground shows. The background and draperies are in 
 this case in translucent colour. 
 
 Plaques of painted enamel, it will be observed, are 
 usually slightly convex on the surface. There is a 
 practical reason for this. A coat of enamel would, as 
 it contracted in cooling, draw in the edges of a flat 
 sheet of copper and make it curl up, just as a sheet of 
 stout paper pasted on to card will draw it out of the flat 
 as it dries. This danger is anticipated by coating the 
 copper with enamel on the reverse side also, which is 
 always done unless the copper is extraordinarily thick ; 
 
159 
 but it is well to make security twice sure by having the 
 copper convex to begin with. 
 
 Painting upon a modelled surface verges upon 
 incrustation (Chapter XVI.). At times it oversteps 
 
 91. EMBOSSED AND PAINTED ENAMEL, SIGNED *'j. C. 
 
i6o 
 the line, as in the shield of Charles IX. in the Galerie 
 d'Apollon, in the Louvre, where, by the way, the 
 pinkish flesh colour has for the most part peeled off, 
 as if to suggest what a much more pleasing effect would 
 have resulted from the deliberate adoption of the con- 
 vention of gold flesh ; it goes so much better with 
 bright translucent colour. At its worst, however, white 
 or flesh colour is not quite so harsh on a modelled 
 surface as upon a flat one. In the plaque on page 159, 
 where the figure of Diana and the rock behind her are 
 in relief against the flat painted distance, the embossing 
 may be regarded as only giving relief to the picture. 
 Here it certainly adds richness and quality to the 
 colour; but it has not always that pleasing effect. 
 There is in the Louvre an embossed and painted dish 
 by Jean de Court which rivals the pottery of Palissy in 
 its ugliness. 
 
 In the case of very big pieces of enamel, such as 
 the plaques by Pierre Courtois done for the Chateau de 
 Madrid (1559), there is every excuse for not attempting 
 to make them flat. They are made up, it will be 
 remembered, of a number of parts fitted together 
 into panels some five feet high, the biggest ever done ; 
 but, even so, the component pieces are of such size 
 that there would be every likelihood of their buckling 
 in the fire ; and a certain amount of embossing, if it 
 does not altogether prevent that, effectually disguises it. 
 These great figures look rather coarsely done where 
 we see them in the Cluny Museum ; but, placed at the 
 right distance from the eye, they must have made most 
 effective decoration. 
 
92. VENETIAN ENAMEL OF THE FIFTEENTH OR SIXTEENTH 
 
 CENTURY. 
 
 XX. VENETIAN ENAMEL. 
 
 What is known as Venetian enamel may be called 
 translucent incrustation. It is all on the surface of 
 the metal. And in a sense it is painted, though it is in 
 no sense painter's work. So far, indeed, is it removed 
 from the pictorial in treatment that it has never been 
 greatly esteemed by connoisseurs, who assume picture 
 to be the highest form of art. That they may fairly do ; 
 but to value art only in so far as it approaches the pictorial, 
 is to judge decorative art by quite a false standard. One 
 would have thought it clear enough to anyone in the 
 least appreciative of enamel that the Venetian work did 
 more justice to the "metier" than the most consummate 
 E. M 
 
l62 
 
 93. SO-CALLED " BURGUNDIAN " BEAKER OF TRANSLUCENT ENAMEL 
 IN THE KUNST HISTORISCHES MUSEUM AT VIENNA. 
 
i63 
 
 94. FIFTEENTH CENTURY FLEMISH BEAKER IN GRISAILLE. 
 
 M 2 
 
164 
 picture painting in grisaille. It 
 suffers in popular estimation 
 for what is a great merit in it, 
 its purely ornamental character. 
 Venice was in close contact 
 with the East, and there is 
 something about the Venetian 
 design which is almost Persian. 
 In Venetian enamel the cop- 
 per, usually a vessel of some 
 kind (though there are in the 
 British Museum and in the 
 Gewerbs Museum at Cologne 
 some square plaques or tren- 
 chers, curiously alike in design), 
 is generally " gadrooned " or 
 beaten up into bulbous shapes, 
 and then coated with white tin 
 enamel. This is in turn glazed 
 with deep, rich cobalt blue and 
 copper green and manganese 
 purple, always in broad masses 
 of colour, and finally patterned 
 over with feathery gold brush- 
 work and coated with flux. The 
 gold pattern frequently encloses 
 little jewels of turquoise and 
 coral red. This coral red stands 
 up above the ground, just as 
 the Rhodian red does in Persian 
 pottery, and looks as if it were 
 The gold, though surface work, 
 has very much the effect of damascening. You can 
 see plainly enough in the dish on page 161 the zones 
 of white and colour, and the gold tracery upon them. 
 
 95 SIXTEENTH CENTURY 
 SILVER-GILT ENAMELLED 
 SPOON, GERMAN (COMP. g6). 
 
 the same clay colour. 
 
i6s 
 
 It is in such places as the centres of the " palmettes " 
 or spreading leaves there shown, that the drops of coral 
 red are introduced, like jewels. 
 
 Persian influence is to be traced again in the so- 
 called " Burgundian " cups of the fifteenth century in 
 the National Museum at Vienna, one of which is illus- 
 trated on page 162. The birds and beasts there seem 
 to be the undoubted offspring of the creatures on a 
 Persian carpet. 
 
 96. DETAIL OF 95 SHOWING LEAVES AND 
 STEMS OF GILT METAL EMBEDDED IN THE 
 TRANSLUCENT AND OPAQUE WHITE ENAMEL. 
 
 There is at Vienna a cup of very similar character, 
 the goblet of Frederick III., which is called Venetian ; 
 and it seems very likely that all of this is Venetian 
 workmanship, done perhaps with an eye to Burgundian 
 taste. The cup on page 163, said to be Flemish, has 
 something in common with it, though it is in grisaille 
 and gold. 
 
 The " Burgundian " colours are the same as in the 
 Venetian vessels already mentioned, translucent blue, 
 green, and purple, and they are more or less sprinkled 
 with gold. The white, apparently painted on the trans- 
 lucent colour, is shaded by way of difference (as may 
 
1 66 
 be seen in the animals) with Httle dots of black, 
 " poinctille," as a Frenchman would call it. On the 
 base of the cup is some amber colour, not, so far as 
 I know, to be found in Venetian enamel. The little 
 flowers, stars, crescents, and rays of f^old or gilt foil, 
 which have been embedded in the enamel ground and 
 rise slightly above its surface, form a distinctive feature 
 in the work. The Burgundian cups are of the fifteenth 
 century; the more ornamental ''Venetian" work is of 
 the sixteenth at earliest ; and the painting in gold upon 
 this last is probably only a cheaper way of getting the 
 effect of foil. Brushwork allows, of course, a much freer 
 and more effective use of gold. 
 
 The relation of the Burgundian method to cloisonne 
 is shown in a fifteenth century spoon in the Victoria 
 and Albert Museum (95, 96), which is said to be of 
 German workmanship. We find in it again transparent 
 green and purple and opaque white grounds, with silver 
 gilt ornament embedded in it, the leaves chased in 
 delicate relief, the stalk patterned, and the ground under 
 the clear enamel tooled to give brilliancy to the colour. 
 The wonder is, perhaps, that this kind of work has not 
 been carried further, especially when it is remembered 
 how cloisons were, even in old work, sometimes not 
 soldered to the metal, but kept in place by the fused 
 enamel. 
 
 In Hungarian wire enamel of the sixteenth century 
 or later, we come upon small discs of foil which have 
 been driven into the colour until one seems to see, in 
 the concave face of these little dots of gold, the impres- 
 sion of the rounded end of the implement employed in 
 pressing them into place. 
 
97- SALT CELLAR IN GRISAILLE, BY PIERRE REYMOND. 
 
 XXI. PAINTING IN GRISAILLE. 
 
 About the end of the first quarter of the sixteenth 
 century enamel-painting in grisaille came into fashion. 
 So far as concerned technique, it was simply a carrying 
 further of the method adopted from the first for flesh 
 painting, except that the body-white was ordinarily 
 painted on to black instead of manganese purple. 
 
 The process was this : the copper was first coated 
 with black, let us say, and fired. Upon that was laid 
 a very thin film of white, reducing it to dark grey. 
 This, before it was fired, formed a good surface on 
 which to sketch or transfer the outline of a design. 
 That done, the outline was scratched down to the black, 
 and the coating of white was rubbed away, dusted off 
 with a brush, or otherwise removed from the back- 
 ground and from any other portions of the design which 
 were to appear in the full strength of the black. When 
 this was fired, the artist had, as it were, the ghost of 
 his picture. To " materialise " it he had only to go on 
 painting in white, thinly for the darker tints, more 
 solidly for the lighter, gradually piling it up until it 
 was quite thick where he wanted pure white. The 
 safe practice was, however, not to put on too much 
 enamel at once, but to get solidity by successive 
 paintings, each of which had to be fired. 
 
i68 
 
 The process is exactly analogous to the " pate-sur- 
 pate " of the china painter, who, indeed, derived his 
 inspiration from Limoges enamel. A competent painter 
 can get by means of it a certain amount of actual 
 relief, for the high lights are raised appreciably above 
 the level of the dark ground. It is said that in the 
 seventeenth century china clay was sometimes mixed 
 with the enamel to give it relief; but tin enamel would 
 do all that was required in that direction, and the only 
 advantage in using china clay, assuming that it would 
 adhere sufficiently, would be its greater translucency. 
 An enameller might very possibly experiment with 
 china clay, as he would with any other likely sub- 
 stance that came in his way. 
 
 Tin enamel is thick and heavy and difficult to work, 
 and has to be manipulated in a different way from any 
 other kind of pigment used by painters. It is usually 
 dropped on from the point of a brush, and the drops, 
 adroitly placed, are afterwards worked together, blended 
 and softened off with spatula, needle point, brush, or 
 whatever it may be. But all this while the volatile oil, 
 which is the medium employed, is evaporating fast ; 
 and the v/ork has to be done quickly, before the white 
 sets, so that it takes a very prompt, slick workman to 
 make sure of his eifect. 
 
 The process of scraping out, referred to in describing 
 the initial stages of the work (you can see the scratched 
 line plainly in the portrait opposite), was employed to 
 considerable purpose by the early painters, who seem 
 to have felt this to be a more sportsmanlike way of 
 getting lines of dark than by painting them on the white 
 in black. Having got a grey tint, they would scrape 
 down to that again just as they did to the black. To 
 what extent grisaille painters may have departed from 
 the method of pure "pate-sur-pate," that is to say of 
 
i69 
 putting on layer after layer of white and scraping or rub- 
 bing down to the dark, it is of no use pretending to say. 
 Similar effects are to be got by different means. The 
 white enamel might be wiped off in a wet state instead 
 
 98. PORTRAIT HEAD, SHOWING BLACK LINES SCRAPED OUT 
 OF THE WHITE ENAMEL. 
 
 of being erased when it was dry, and who could tell ? 
 The liquid effects of " pate-sur-pate " on porcelain are got, 
 as M. Solon tells us, partly by engraving or cutting 
 down the white porcelain until it is thin enough to let 
 the dark ground show through. If an enameller got 
 
99- GRISAILLE BY PIERRE COURTEYS. 
 
 his white too soHd, there was nothing for it but to 
 poHsh it down ; and men may, for all we know, some- 
 times have relied upon the possibility of doing that, 
 and painted heavily with a view to polishing down 
 afterwards. Working on the hard enamel, they could 
 see at least what they were doing, and had no longer 
 to reckon with the fire. 
 
 Although grisaille is thus in theory a process of paint- 
 ing in white upon black, it seldom stopped at that in 
 practice. It can hardly be said that enamellers did not 
 play the game; they were at liberty to choose their own 
 game, and to make rules of their own ; but they played 
 a game less strict than pure " pate-sur-pate " painting. 
 There were very few of them who did not finish with 
 shading in lines or hatchings of black upon the white. It 
 was the obvious and only way of making good whatever 
 had gone wrong in the fire, and something generally did 
 go wrong. 
 
 An artist of any individuality would naturally work 
 out for himself a manner which was not quite that of 
 everybody else ; and there is a very noticeable differ- 
 ence in the handling of the various grisaille painters. 
 Some, like Leonard Limousin, paint with freedom. 
 
171 
 
 They knew what to do, and how to do it ; and could 
 afford to leave their work spontaneous and fresh. The 
 work of some is hard, that of others exceedingly smooth 
 and soft, as, for example, the painting of Penicaud II., 
 who makes little use of line, even when working upon 
 a fairly large scale. Luthmer says he used a grey 
 instead of a black under-painting, and he certainly 
 seems to have painted in grey upon white sometimes. 
 Pierre Reymond also painted in grey on grey, with 
 admirable results, not of course appreciable in a line 
 drawing like that at the head of this chapter (97). 
 The use made of the scratched line depended upon 
 the painter, partly upon his temperament perhaps, 
 partly upon his skill, though it was more commonly 
 
 100. CUP IN GRISAILLE, BY CONTY NOUAILHER. 
 
172 
 
 employed in early than in later work. It did not lend 
 itself very well to the rather smug finish at which 
 grisaille painters eventually aimed. 
 
 The earlier painters seem to have got at least their 
 broader outlines by scraping down to the ground. So 
 did Leonard Limousin, who would define the main 
 folds of his drapery by that means, and at times 
 go so far as to outline the features of the face, the 
 eyes even, in the same way. Pierre Reymond, the 
 Courteys, and others made at times liberal use of the 
 needle, scratching out not only outlines, but fine 
 hatchings. These, if they proved aggressive, as they 
 were apt to do, were toned down with a film of white, 
 which gave very much the effect of scraping down to 
 a grey tint. In the result the two processes are 
 barely distinguishable one from the other. Failing 
 such after-treatment, fine lines and hatchings with the 
 point have too much the effect of penwork to go well 
 with the more tender modelling built up in white. 
 
 The final painting in metallic gold served various 
 purposes : to heighten the modelling, as had been done 
 already in coloured work ; to define the outline where 
 the shading was so dark that it would otherwise have 
 been lost in the background ; to represent filigree 
 embroidery upon costume ; to dot or otherwise diaper a 
 background ; to outline ornament; or to trace arabesque 
 or Arab-like patterns upon the borders and the backs of 
 dishes. Pierre Reymond made admirable and graceful 
 use of this ornament freely painted in gold upon the 
 black. 
 
 The notion, which also Pierre Reymond is supposed, 
 to have started, of entirely coating copper vessels with 
 tin enamel and painting them, whether in grisaille or 
 colour (loo), was not a very happy one. The resulting 
 forms have the character neither of pottery, nor of 
 
73 
 
 lOI. PLAQUE IN MONOCHROME, BY L. LIMOUSIN, IN THE WADDESDON 
 COLLECTION AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 
 
174 
 metal-work, nor of some new thing. Personally, I always 
 feel to want acknowledgment of the metal base, if only 
 at the rims; and it is just there that the enamel is often 
 broken away, giving the thing a shabby look, and show- 
 ing the practical necessity of bringing the metal to the 
 surface at such places. 
 
 Enamel pictures in black and white are seldom 
 altogether satisfactory. There is an inky quality about 
 them, and a sort of chilliness. No one with a sense of 
 colour, and especially of vitreous colour, will think their 
 draughtsmanlike qualities — and they are considerable — 
 sufficient compensation for the loss of what is after all 
 best and most beautiful in enamel. Leonard Limousin 
 was more than justified in preferring to paint upon a 
 deep rich blue ground instead of a black : the 
 Neptune panel (page 173) is painted all in shades of 
 blue. Pierre Reymond also had a liking for a blue 
 reduced by white to about the colour of a Chinese 
 " hawthorn " pot. Quite the most beautiful effects of 
 pure monochrome painting are upon a dark ground, 
 usually a blue one. 
 
 The Italians painted sometimes in grisaille upon a 
 ground of translucent cobalt over silver, but in stipple, 
 not ** pAte-sur-pdte." The term grisaille is commonly, 
 though not strictly, used to describe monochrome 
 painting in blue or green ; but it is, of course, the paint- 
 ing in black and white, with the resultant grey, which 
 gives grisaille its name. Whatever the colour of the 
 ground, the process of building up the design upon it in 
 body white is the same. 
 
 One cannot help wondering how the fashion of 
 grisaille ever came about. Probably it was more or 
 less a reaction against the excessive richness of much 
 of the work in translucent colours. No doubt the use 
 of tinsel was abused. Apparently it was beyond the 
 
175 
 enamellers' power to reconcile the opaque colour they 
 were obliged to use in flesh painting with the trans- 
 lucent colours employed in the rest of the work ; and 
 one way out of the difficulty was to abandon colour and 
 paint entirely in black and white. 
 
 I02. GRISAILLE ORNAMENT OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 The art seems also to have got into the hands of men 
 who were primarily draughtsmen, to whom colour was 
 a lesser consideration than form ; and grisaille gave 
 scope for draughtsmanship. Then, again, what better 
 means could there be of reproducing engravings after 
 German and Italian masters ? And few of the great 
 
176 
 Limousins, except Penicaud III., depended much upon 
 their own invention. 
 
 Whatever way it came about, there can be no doubt 
 painting in grisaille was a departure from the one 
 direction in which enamel promises the most brilliant 
 results; and in departing from it enamellers put 
 themselves at a disadvantage. 
 
 Even a French apologist for this French art 
 (Claudius Popelin) vaunts only the admirable rendering 
 of the designs of Raffaelle and the rest, and makes 
 no claim for any quality in their work peculiar to, 
 or characteristic of, enamel ; and one feels always 
 that they were rather skilful copyists in a difficult 
 medium than artists making much of the possibilities of 
 the particular craft they followed. Ornamental design, 
 without figure work (102), seldom occurs in grisaille. 
 
 Strange to say, this change of fashion is supposed by 
 many to be in the direction of higher art. It is, of 
 course, only in the direction of more pictorial art, by 
 no means the same thing. And, unfortunately for 
 grisaille, the qualities of a picture are the very last to 
 be obtained in enamel. It was a case of dropping the 
 bone for the shadow. 
 
103. TINTED GRISAILLE, BY LEONARD LIMOUSIN. 
 
 XXII. TINTED GRISAILLE. 
 
 The fashion of grisaille did not appeal equally to all the 
 enamel painters of the sixteenth century. Some of them 
 had a feeling for colour not to be kept altogether in 
 abeyance by the mode. Many of them, and those of 
 the best — Jean Penicaud, for example, Pierre Reymond, 
 Leonard Limousin (103) — found relief from black and 
 white in what may be described as " painted grisaille." 
 That is to say, on a foundation of grisaille they painted 
 in colours for the most part translucent. Work of this 
 kind bridges in a way the gap between grisaille and 
 painting in translucent colour directly upon copper or 
 over gold and silver foil. It looks very often as if, 
 impatient with grisaille, they had taken to tinting it. 
 And that is possibly how it came about ; but there is some 
 coloured work which suggests another possibility. It is 
 conceivable that grisaille itself was in the first instance 
 E. N 
 
178 
 no more than a means to an end, that it was adopted 
 only as a groundwork for painting in coloured glazes ; 
 and that, having reached the stage of modelling in 
 black and white, they were so pleased with the result 
 that they abandoned the idea of colour, and perfected 
 the new "genre." I once commissioned a painter 
 to execute for me some panels in red, and he 
 brought them to me in black and white, explaining, 
 when I remonstrated with him, that he had meant 
 to get the colour by glazing, but that he had 
 so delighted himself with the effect in black and 
 white that he could not find it in his heart to 
 spoil it. 
 
 At all events, side by side with pure grisaille there 
 was carried on a practice of tinted grisaille, in which the 
 design was first painted in white on black or some dark 
 colour, then glazed with translucent colour, and finally 
 perhaps touched up with white again in the high lights. 
 It was a common thing to paint ornament frankly in 
 black and white and then glaze it in parts with tur- 
 quoise, copper green, and manganese ; and the same 
 thing occurred in figure painting, as, for example, in 
 a plaque in the British Museum signed P. R. 1541, in 
 which a shepherd and his sheep are in grisaille, but 
 the grass is delicately tinted in green, the water in 
 turquoise, the sky in grey blue, a lion in pale yellow, 
 and the roof of a house in the pale red of the flesh. 
 
 Very delicate and pretty effects were produced by 
 tinting grisaille. But it seems to be a condition of 
 success that any shading in grey should be light and 
 sparingly employed, so that the colours remain for the 
 most part fresh and pure. 
 
 In the panel by Jean Penicaud II. (opposite), 
 the modelling in grisaille under the tints is carried 
 tather too far. In the Cupid and Psyche panel after 
 
179 
 
 1 
 
 j ,.C: 
 
 
 1 V 
 
 -".■ V • 
 
 i^^^K^H^^iL^s^^l^Bi^l^^BI^HHflfll^H fl 
 
 . ./«^^>^/-\ ^'- > 
 
 
 / ■'•••^v'V 
 
 -:• ..\-' ,.»^. -.*«»*-..- '-5~-. - P 
 
 
 i ::..'--w'v 
 
 
 / 
 
 ■ '-■■ • > - ,.# •■ 1 
 
 N 2 
 
i8o 
 Raffaelle (page 177), the modelling is got by painting 
 upon very faint grisaille, and there, too, some of the 
 colour is opaque. 
 
 Again, in the famous Apostle figures at Chartres (105) 
 the modelling is almost entirely in green, blue, purple, 
 salmon, golden brown, or whatever the local colour of 
 the draperies. They are on a white ground ; but the 
 same thing occurs in painted grisaille figures upon a dark 
 one. An exceptional way of going to work, shown in a 
 little sixteenth century plaque in the Galerie d' Apollon, 
 was to pencil in the figures in brown upon white, and 
 slightly to tint them in parts with grey blue, turquoise, 
 flesh colour, and manganese purple. Franks mentions 
 some Flemish-looking enamel upon a brown ground 
 painted in white, glazed with translucent colour, and 
 heightened with gold. 
 
 Deeper tinting also occurs (in the work, for example, 
 of Jean Penicaud II.), in which the draperies are not 
 only, as it were, washed over with a colour, but shaded 
 with a deeper tint of the same or some other colour, 
 such as green upon yellow. 
 
 Another, and very satisfactory, method, employed, for 
 example, by Pierre Courteys, was not so much to shade 
 white with colour as to glaze it with colour and paint 
 white into or on to that. The shells, for example, in the 
 border of the little saucer on page 182, are glazed with 
 translucent turquoise and purple into which touches of 
 white are introduced. The brilliant blue and green 
 grounds employed in portraiture were painted on a 
 foundation of white. 
 
 Of all those who painted more or less in grisaille 
 Pierre Reymond distinguishes himself as the one 
 especially gifted with the colour sense. 
 
 No one painted more boldly and directly than 
 Leonard Limousin, when he had not to get a likeness; 
 
i8i 
 
 105. PAINTED PLAQUE BY LEONARD LIMOUSIN, NOW IN THE 
 CHURCH OF S. PIERRE AT CHARTRES. 
 
I82 
 
 and his colour was as juicy as could be wished. 
 Leonard's is a great name, none the less known that 
 he often signed it : in one case he introduces into 
 his composition a little label with the advertisement 
 of his qualifications, " Enameller and Painter to the 
 
 I06. SHELL ORNAMENT PAINTED IN WHITE AND GLAZED WITH 
 TRANSLUCENT COLOURS, FITZHENRY COLLECTION. 
 
 Chamber of the King " ; but there is no mistake he was 
 really a consummate artist. 
 
 It was a very happy thought to paint delicate 
 arabesque in white upon a translucent copper green 
 ground and to shade it with the same. The contrast 
 between the fresh green ornament and the relatively 
 
■83 
 
 lOy. PORTRAIT BY LEONARD LIMOUSIN. 
 
 olive tint which the metal, shining through, gives to the 
 ground, is most harmonious ; and a filigree pattern in 
 gold upon the ground enhances the effect. 
 
 The first use of colour over white was as a flesh tint 
 — and no wonder, when we see how unsatisfactory was 
 the flesh tint got by painting in white on manganese. 
 
1 84 
 It was with flesh tint also that enamel began in glass 
 painting ; and it was the same iron-red (we call it also 
 ** china red ") which was used in both cases. There is 
 no possibility of confounding it with manganese. That 
 was cold and purplish, this inclines, if anything, to 
 orange ; that looked like white dropped moist upon the 
 ground colour, this lies evidently on the surface of the 
 white, and has the dry look of red chalk. It is not the 
 colour of flesh, though they may have thought to get 
 flesh colour that way ; but as a means of draughtsman- 
 ship, by which to get delicate detail and accuracy of 
 modelling, the attraction of it was quite irresistible to 
 the portrait painter. Leonard Limousin used it con- 
 stantly (page 183), though I fancy he sometimes mixed 
 white with it. The surface got by hatching, stippling, 
 and delicate line work was, however, so different from 
 that of the more liquid-looking colour that the result is 
 not absolute unity of effect. Apart from this dry china 
 red, we come occasionally upon a transparent pink 
 glaze which cannot well be manganese, though in some 
 of Pierre Reymond's work, where the cool blue tone of 
 the painting generally may conceivably have, as it 
 were, taken some of the purple out of it, it might 
 possibly be that. The flesh tint over delicate grisaille in 
 Leonard Limousin's Apostle plaques at Chartres (105) 
 cannot be explained in that way, Mr. Cunynghame 
 speaks of a glaze of gold pink used by J. Penicaud III. 
 That might have given it. Is it possible that Leonard 
 learnt the secret of gold red from Cellini ? 
 
 I wonder whether others have been struck, as I have 
 more than once, with the resemblance in colour between 
 painted grisaille and Italian majolica. It is in a 
 hrighter key ; but the family likeness is strong. 
 
XXIII. ON-ENAMEL PAINTING. 
 
 There is a distinction to be drawn between enamel 
 and merely on-enamel, or, as a potter would say, " on- 
 glaze " colour. It may be only a difference in the 
 degree to which the colouring matter is made one with 
 the glaze, but in effect it amounts to the difference 
 between a metallic oxide dissolved in glass and an oxide 
 which is only mixed with it. There is all the difference 
 between painting in enamel and painting on it. 
 
 There is a certain school of enamellers whose colour 
 has more in common with the ordinary on-glaze 
 pigment used in pottery painting than with the coloured 
 glass which constitutes enamel. It is, in fact, precisely 
 what was used in painting upon porcelain, and the 
 only difference between it and painted faience is that 
 in one case the tin enamel is upon metal, and in the 
 other upon clay. 
 
 Enamel at its best and brightest is neither on the 
 glaze nor under the glaze, but in it, held in solution. 
 It has a luscious, juicy quality compared to which on- 
 glaze or on-enamel colour is hard and dry, though in 
 the case of a very fusible colour upon a soft vitreous 
 surface it may, if sufficiently fired, sink in and be held 
 more or less in suspension. 
 
 On-enamel colour was used by Leonard Limousin, 
 if not before his time, but at first only by way of 
 exception — not so much, perhaps, to give the tone of 
 flesh (though it gave a much more pleasing flesh tint 
 than manganese) as to enable the painter to model bis 
 
1 86 
 flesh with a certainty which the " pate-sur-pate " process 
 did not allow. At first, and for a long while, it was 
 used, apart from flesh, only to force the shadows and 
 to mend faults in modelling. It was a way of *' faking," 
 and was regarded as such. A coat of flux laid over it 
 dissembled its use. The masters of "pate-sur-pate" 
 had no great occasion to resort to it, and they used it 
 sparingly. The more extended use of it, and especially 
 the habit of dependence upon it for colour, was a 
 distinct departure from the older and more difficult 
 proceeding, and marks the beginning of a downward 
 course. " 'Twas ever thus ! " The practice called in 
 to help out a method ousts it in the end. 
 
 Eventually enamel, such as it was, fell into the 
 hands of the porcelain painters, and might have been 
 practised in any porcelain factory. Very likely it was. 
 It was practised certainly not only in the neighbour- 
 hood of Paris, but at Dresden, at Battersea, and at Liver- 
 pool, where there were china works. There are plenty 
 of seventeenth and eighteenth century enamelled copper 
 vessels made in Germany which are very like porcelain, 
 and were no doubt made in imitation of it. The pretence 
 implies, of course, a white ground. 
 
 Whether the design is upon a white or a dark ground 
 makes theoretically no difference; the same process may 
 be employed in either case. But practically it does 
 make a difference. In the case of a dark ground it is 
 more convenient to paint in body colour, and accord- 
 ingly it was the dark ground which led to " pate-sur- 
 pate " painting. It is not surprising that the adoption 
 of a white ground, more or less in imitation of porcelain, 
 led to a method of workmanship more like china paint- 
 ing, and differing from grisaille or other Limoges 
 enamel much as transparent water-colour differs from 
 body colour. It ended in miniature painting, and was 
 
1 87 
 practised by men who painted precisely the same kind 
 of portraits upon enamel as they had painted upon 
 ivory. Somewhere about the year 1632 Jean Toutin 
 is supposed to have made the new departure of painting 
 on watch-cases and such small goldsmith's work in 
 colours upon a white ground. His published designs, 
 however, show ornament in white on black. 
 
 At the head of the miniaturists stands Petitot (1606 
 — i6gi). Born at Geneva, he began by painting orna- 
 ment, with which he decorated snuffboxes, watch-cases, 
 and the like ; and it is just possible that the starting- 
 point of his art may have been the local industry of 
 clock and watch dial painting. The foundation of his 
 miniatures was sometimes copper, more often gold, 
 overlaid with tin enamel, upon which he painted in 
 china-painter's colours. It was Petitot who by his 
 masterly execution gave a certain prestige to seven- 
 teenth century "on-enamel" work; but the renown 
 was due entirely to the miniature painter, not to the 
 enameller. He adopted the vitreous medium, we 
 may be sure, not out of any sympathy with it, but 
 because it promised permanence. Still he made him- 
 self a master of it, in so far as it served his purpose 
 of portraiture. 
 
 Between the years 1753 and 1775 enamel painting 
 was practised at Battersea, where it was introduced by 
 a Huguenot, Janssen. The work done there was hard 
 and chalky in colour, and took entirely the pictorial 
 direction. It never rose above manufacture, and it 
 descended even to transfer printing, which became 
 about this time a trade practice in pottery decoration. 
 
 Nothing ever done at Battersea will compare for a 
 moment with French work, any more than Chelsea 
 china compares with Sevres. There is a snuffbox in 
 the Wallace collection in which the radiating divisions 
 
1 88 
 of a cockleshell pattern, outlined in raised gold, are 
 most exquisitely painted with minute peacocks' feathers 
 in green, red, black, and yellow. That rather trivial 
 sort of thing may not be particularly worth doing, but 
 it could hardly be done better than it was by the 
 French in the days of Louis XV. 
 
 The seventeenth century method was not at the 
 best a promising one for colour decoration, but there is 
 plenty of work of a rather earlier date which suggests 
 to what much better purpose the Battersea painters 
 and others might have employed it. 
 
 In Hungarian work, for example, of the sixteenth 
 and seventeenth centuries, ornamental devices were 
 traced in colours upon white with very pretty effect ; or 
 floral patterns, delicately outlined in black, covered 
 the ground so closely that, though the interstices were 
 filled in with the outline pigment, the black hardly 
 counted as background; and when the leaves and 
 flowers were in colour veined with black (white flowers 
 were veined with red or other colour) the result was 
 very rich. More naturalistic flower painting, even that 
 which was done at the end of the sixteenth century, was 
 never really very good. 
 
 The best painted work on white was the Chinese. 
 The painted enamels of Canton (Canton being the place 
 where porcelain, brought, according to Dr. Bushell, 
 overland in the white from Ching-te-chen, was enamelled 
 in colours) are executed precisely in the manner of 
 porcelain painting ; and they are so like it in pattern, 
 too, that there can be little doubt they were the work 
 of the very men who painted the porcelain known 
 to collectors as belonging to .the " famille rose " or 
 " famille verte." The saucer opposite (io8) might, 
 except for the quality of its tin enamel ground, be 
 " famille rose " porcelain ; the four-sided one on page 191, 
 
1 89 
 in brown upon white with a gold outline, is, on the other 
 hand, reminiscent rather of lacquer than of porcelain. 
 
 There is in the British Museum a curious Chinese 
 box in which the bronze is first fretted and then 
 coated with white; on this the design is outlined in 
 
 I08. CANTON ENAMEL, CIRCA I7OO. 
 
 black, and filled in with pale translucent colours. 
 The richest painted work of the Chinese is where 
 none of the white is allowed to come to the surface. 
 There is a good example of this at the British Museum, 
 a boot-shaped bowl brought from Thibet, with what 
 is called a "brocade" pattern in cobalt blue upon 
 
turquoise. This is unmistakably in imitation of 
 cloisonne, for the ornament has, or had, a painted 
 outline in gold, now for the most part worn away. 
 
 The truth is, Canton enamels were in the main only 
 a base imitation of porcelain, and it was as such the 
 Chinese themselves esteemed them. 
 
 As a substitute for semi-translucent porcelain tin 
 enamel was at the best a very poor thing. No wonder 
 that, by the end of the eighteenth century, the use of 
 so inadequate a makeshift died out, not to be revived 
 until our own day for the purposes of export. It was 
 good enough for '^ foreign devils " ! 
 
 The Chinese were, for all that, most skilful workmen, 
 and brought to enamel painting all their experience in 
 porcelain. It is said that Limoges enamels were sent 
 to China in the time of Louis XIV. to be copied, just 
 as we sent out heraldic designs to be painted on dessert 
 services. India, Persia, and other parts of West and 
 South Asia were also, it seems, supplied by China. 
 
 As upon porcelain, so upon enamel, the Chinese 
 employed a much more highly vitrified colour than was 
 used in Europe. It stood up in glassy relief upon the 
 ground. The above-mentioned objections to on-enamel 
 colour do not apply to the productions of Canton. 
 
 Some Persian work which has every appearance of 
 merely painted enamel is not simply that. Shallow 
 troughs have been chased down for the tin enamel, 
 leaving fine gold cloison-like lines between, roughly 
 following the forms of the ornament. The purpose 
 of the dividing metal is only to key the white, and 
 the lines are not noticeable until you examine the work. 
 It is quite a usual thing in Persian work to intro- 
 duce little champleve or chased panels of tin-white 
 painted with ornament in colour (page 127). I have 
 seen, too, in Persian work little alternating panels of 
 
191 
 red, blue, green, or other colour, with ornament in 
 white upon them apparently picked out of it. Another 
 interesting Persian device is to paint gay-coloured floral 
 ornament on white delicately outlined with red, which 
 upon blue and green gives practically a black out- 
 
 109. CANTON ENAMEL, NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 line. Here again we have hints of the kind of thing 
 which might have been done at Battersea and else- 
 where, if eighteenth century taste had not been set 
 upon more pictorial projects. It was not so much for 
 want of technical mastery over their materials as for 
 lack of sympathy with enamel and right understanding 
 
■ 1 92 
 of the possibilities that lay in it that European 
 on-glaze painters lost hold of the mastery of enamel 
 colour. The effects they aimed at were only to be got 
 in comparatively dry colour ; and the liquid, juicy, 
 vitreous enamel colours, which fulfilled all the desire 
 of Orientals, to whom decoration meant something, 
 would not have served the Western pictorial purpose. 
 Decorative art is likeliest to achieve something when 
 the artist starts from the full knowledge and apprecia- 
 tion of what his means allow. When he sets out to do 
 something that would be better done in some other 
 medium, the utmost he attains is second best — more 
 likely it is failure altogether. 
 
XXIV. THE PALETTE OF THE 
 ENAMELLER. 
 
 The chemistry of enamel colours has been duly 
 expounded by trustworthy experts, by none more help- 
 fully than by Mr. H. H. Cunynghame, a writer not only 
 determined to test the truth of statements commonly 
 taken on trust, but thoroughly competent to do so. 
 Fortunately, too, as an amateur, he was under no 
 temptation of withholding from craftsmen generally 
 secrets which some workmen would still guard with 
 a jealousy belonging rather to trade than to artistic 
 practice. 
 
 The scientific aspect of the subject is almost beyond 
 the scope of this volume, and would be entirely so were 
 it not that, apart from the necessity of knowing something 
 about enamel colours if you wish at all to understand 
 their behaviour under fire, it is difficult to discuss 
 enamel colour, even from the artistic standpoint, with- 
 out reference to its chemistry. It is not easy to express 
 in words the quality of a particular red or blue ; but 
 an enameller understands at once, and with barely 
 a chance of misconception, when you describe it as iron, 
 copper, or cobalt. Some short survey, therefore, of the 
 bases of enamel colours is not to be avoided even in a 
 book about art and workmanship. 
 
 Enamel is glass. This the enameller uses in the 
 form of a paste made of powdered coloured glass. 
 The operation of the fire at once fuses the enamel 
 
 E. .. O 
 
194 
 into its cell or on to its ground and brings out the 
 colour, together with such translucency as it may 
 possess. 
 
 The colour of glass is due to some metallic oxide ; 
 but the quality of the colour was partly due in ancient 
 times to the accident of some impurity either in the 
 glass itself or in the colouring matter. The inevitable 
 trace of iron in the soda or potash, which was an 
 ingredient in it, gave to old glass the greenish or 
 yellowish tint it was the constant aim of glassmakers 
 to get rid of, with very incomplete success until lead was 
 used in quantities sufficient to produce what is known 
 as ''flint glass." 
 
 A slight tint in the body of the glass would barely 
 affect, it is true, the colour of the deeper, richer, and 
 more powerful tones. But in their case the colour 
 was further qualified by impurities natural to the 
 oxide employed to stain the glass, and not separable 
 from it by any then used process of refining. The 
 modicum of manganese found in cobalt gave it a purpler 
 tinge than pure oxide of cobalt would have ; the 
 iron in manganese gave the purple produced by it a 
 brownish cast. 
 
 The action of various metallic oxides upon glass is 
 different. Certain of them stain or dye the glass with- 
 out affecting its translucency ; others entirely destroy 
 that quality, and give an opaque body-colour. The 
 addition also of antimony or tin, either of which gives 
 in itself a white, will cloud any coloured glass to which 
 it is added, as cream clouds strawberry juice. The 
 enameller may, in fact, use tin, as the water-colour 
 painter uses Chinese white, to deaden his transparent 
 colour and give it " body." 
 
 Absolutely different colours may be obtained from 
 the same metal according to the nature of the oxide, 
 
195 
 the character of the glass, and the heat to which it is 
 subjected. Out of copper we get ruby red, emerald 
 green, and, with a soda base, turquoise blue ; out of 
 iron sealing-wax or coral red, sea-green, and brownish 
 yellow; out of chromium a heavy opaque green ; out 
 of cobalt all the blues except turquoise. Manganese 
 gives purple ; gold a paler, colder, and rosier red 
 than copper ; silver a clear yellow, and antimoniate of 
 lead an opaque one. 
 
 The above mentioned, together with tin and antimony 
 for white, made up practically the palette of the enameller 
 until quite modern times. Recent additions to it are 
 yellows from uranium and selenium, and grey and black 
 from iridium. The black used in the old work seems 
 to have been produced by a mixture of colours, more 
 or less the scrapings of the palette. 
 
 Innumerable shades of colour occur in enamel ; 
 subtle mixtures will give all manner of tints — not to 
 be depended upon, of course — and there is no saying 
 what may not be got by accident ; but it is safe to assert 
 that they are all got out of the palette here given. 
 When a result is producible in different ways it would 
 be rash to say by which of them it was actually brought 
 about; but, though it is often said that this or that is a 
 secret of the ancients, there is little or nothing in the 
 old colour which is not to be explained, and reproduced, 
 by modern chemistry. 
 
 The mixing of two or more enamel colours is not 
 such a simple thing as might be supposed. No experi- 
 ence in oil or water-colour painting will prepare an 
 artist for the startling changes which take place in the 
 fire. How should he possibly foresee that copper 
 green and manganese purple will together give him a 
 subdued yellow, or cobalt blue and uranium orange an 
 indigo colour? Given, however, some slight scientific 
 
 o 2 
 
196 
 knowledge, there is nothing so wonderful in the chemical 
 changes which occur. 
 
 Enamels of different colours require a different 
 degree of heat properly to fuse and develop them. 
 That is to say, some will not endure the heat that 
 others demand. The harder enamels, as they are 
 called, have therefore to be fired first, then the 
 colours which will bear less, and so on until the softest 
 of all (gold ruby, as it happens) is subjected to a very 
 slight fire. . Subsequent firings at a lower temperature 
 need not injuriously affect colours already burnt in. 
 
 Seeing that it may be necessary, in order to get the 
 necessary depth or substance, to lay on coat after coat 
 of the same colour, firing it again after each layer, 
 some twenty or more successive firings may be necessary 
 before a complicated piece of work is perfected. 
 
 There is always a risk, however, in submitting enamel 
 to the heat of the kiln, never quite under control ; and 
 the discretion, which is in art so much the better part 
 of valour, has counselled a reticence in the matter of 
 colour which is seldom without its artistic justification. 
 The success of a colour scheme is by no means in pro- 
 portion to the variety of colours in it, though artists 
 are tempted naturally, but far too readily, to try for the 
 whole range of the possible palette. 
 
 With the exception of a couple of yellows from 
 uranium and selenium and a black from iridium, the 
 colours in the palette given opposite were all used by 
 the old enamellers, most of them from early days. 
 
 A fuller palette of opaque colours is made up by the 
 addition of tin to the translucent ones ; a touch of tin, 
 for example, gives to translucent turquoise the milki- 
 ness of the actual stone. Sometimes, however, it 
 destroys the beauty of the colour ; nothing could be 
 much more unpleasant than the tint resulting from the 
 
PALETTE OF ENAMEL COLOURS. 
 
 TRANSLUCENT COLOURS. 
 
 Blue, 
 
 sapphire 
 
 .. Cobalt. 
 
 }> 
 
 turquoise 
 
 . Copper — with a soda base. 
 
 Green, 
 
 emerald 
 
 . Copper. 
 
 >> 
 
 fresh 
 
 . Iron. 
 
 >) 
 
 brownish 
 
 . Impure iron. 
 
 Red, 
 
 ruby 
 
 . Copper protoxide. 
 
 >« 
 
 „ (/a^>wi 
 
 ^) Iron and a little copper. 
 
 »> 
 
 cold ruby or Gold and tin — so-called 
 
 
 rose-pin 
 
 k " Purple of Cassius." 
 
 Yellow, 
 
 pale ... 
 
 Silver. 
 
 >) 
 
 brownish 
 
 . Iron. 
 
 )f 
 
 orange 
 
 . Uranium (modern). 
 
 ff 
 
 amber 
 
 . Selenium {modern). 
 
 Purple 
 
 ... 
 
 . Pure manganese. 
 
 )> 
 
 brownish 
 
 . Manganese and iron. 
 
 5> 
 
 bluish 
 
 . Manganese and cobalt. 
 
 Black 
 
 ... 
 
 . A mixture of colours. 
 
 >> 
 
 ... 
 
 . Iridium {modern). 
 
 
 OPAQ 
 
 UE COLOURS. 
 
 Green, 
 
 dense, heavy. 
 
 Chromium. 
 
 Red, 
 
 coral 
 
 . Iron. 
 
 » 
 
 sealing-wax. 
 
 >> 
 
 >> 
 
 brownish 
 
 >> 
 
 >> 
 
 " sang-de-boeuf 
 
 " Copper. 
 
 Yellow, 
 
 Naples 
 
 . Antimoniate of lead. 
 
 j> 
 
 orange 
 
 . Antimony and iron. 
 
 White 
 
 ... 
 
 . Oxide of tin. 
 
 >> 
 
 ivory 
 
 . Antimony. 
 
198 
 
 mixture of tin and manganese. Shades of colour inter- 
 mediate between those mentioned may be obtained by 
 mixing one with the other ; green may be made bluer 
 or yellower by the addition of blue or yellow; but there 
 is always to be taken into account the chemical action 
 of one upon the other, which the fire may set up. 
 
 The minerals employed are less in number than the 
 colours produced from them. Cobalt is, with one 
 exception, the base of all the blues used in enamelling. 
 It is found naturally alloyed with iron, arsenic, and 
 copper. Iron gives it the grey or blackish cast we see 
 sometimes in Persian faience, manganese a purple hue. 
 At its purest it gives a deep translucent sapphire colour. 
 A touch of tin changes it to opaque lapis blue. It may 
 be lightened by the addition of more tin to a pale grey 
 blue, which inclines very often to lilac. The exception 
 above-mentioned is copper, which gives a turquoise 
 blue, but only with a base of soda. 
 
 Copper is also the source of the purest translucent 
 emerald colour. A browner shade is produced from 
 iron ; but that is because of the impurity of the oxide. 
 In its pure state it gives a green only less fresh than 
 copper. Oxide of chromium gives a rather raw and 
 very opaque green of strongly marked character ; there 
 is no denser colour in the enameller's palette. 
 
 Protoxide of copper gives also a fine translucent 
 ruby red. A paler, colder and rosier ruby, sometimes 
 called '' Purple of Cassius," is a preparation of gold 
 and tin. The addition of chloride of silver warms it. 
 An excess of tin brings it to an opaque purplish pink. 
 Iron yellow with a little copper in it is the colouring 
 matter of the famous Jaipur ruby red. 
 
 Suboxide of copper, used in greater quantity than 
 in translucent ruby, gives an opaque red, very much 
 the colour of the Chinese pottery glaze known as 
 
199 
 " sang-de-boeuf." Oxide of iron gives an opaque red 
 sometimes approaching to this in colour, but more 
 inchned to orange. It is brighter or lower in tone 
 according to the fineness of its division and the heat 
 to which it is subjected ; and it varies from sealing- 
 wax red to, on the one side, chocolate, and on the other 
 coral — the colour, in fact, of the Rhodian pottery red. 
 It might be the very "Armenian bole" the Eastern 
 potters used, except that the clay is possibly too 
 refractory to blend with soft enamels. 
 
 Chloride of silver produces a pale translucent topaz, 
 yellow, to which the addition of arsenic gives an 
 opalescent quality. It is perhaps by the addition of 
 tin to chloride of silver that the opaque lemon yellow 
 of the Chinese is produced. A darker translucent 
 topaz is derived from oxide of iron ; and the addition 
 to it of copper and manganese brings it to what is 
 called " old gold." An opaque variety of this last- 
 mentioned shade, as well as a yolk-of-egg colour, may 
 be got from iron oxide and antimony with a flux rich 
 in lead. The pale opaque tint we call Naples yellow 
 comes from antimoniate of lead. 
 
 Peroxide of manganese in its pure state gives a 
 beautiful purple ; but it is seldom or never found pure, 
 and the process of purifying it by precipitation is modern. 
 We owe to the iron, from which it is seldom free, the 
 beautiful purple brown so frequently met with. A bluish 
 shade of purple is due to a trace of cobalt found with it 
 or added to it. Cobalt itself with plentiful addition of 
 tin will produce pale shades of mauve or lavender. 
 
 Oxide of tin gives a dense white, antimony an ivory 
 white. Manganese with cobalt and iron, or with cobalt 
 and copper, or with plenty of cobalt alone, will give 
 black. No doubt the scrapings of the palette were 
 used for this purpose. 
 
200 
 
 There is not much room for doubt as to the colours 
 that were used in old enamel. As to the composition 
 of any particular colour, it is not possible to be so 
 certain. Much depends always upon the vitreous body 
 of the enamel ; any difference in the ingredients of that 
 may result in quite a diiferent colour from absolutely 
 the same colouring matter. One may feel pretty sure 
 how a tint was arrived at ; but, the more a man knows 
 about the chemistry of the subject, the less he will be 
 disposed to commit himself to the definite statement 
 that, in a given instance, this or that colour is actually 
 due to the use of this or that metallic oxide. 
 
 Enamel colour, being determined by the conditions 
 of enamelling, has a character of its own. So much is 
 this so that one gets to know what to expect, and to 
 expect it very confidently. A quite unexpected colour 
 in the background of a certain piece of enamel which 
 once perplexed me very much, turned out to be only 
 painted wooden ground appearing through fretted 
 interstices in the goldsmith's work. 
 
no. PERSIAN PIPE-HEAD WITH DROPS OF ENAMEL 
 COLOUR IN IMITATION OF CORAL AND TURQUOISES. 
 
 XXV. CHANGES IN THE PALETTE. 
 
 It has already been seen (page 55) how in the beginning 
 enamel colour was chiefly in imitation of precious stones. 
 In quite modern times we come upon pearls of white and 
 beads of turquoise blue and coral red, as in Hungarian 
 jewellery and in the Persian pipe head above, where the 
 little blobs of pink and pale blue, in their gilded setting, 
 make no secret of what they represent. 
 
 Apart from simulation, jewels have influenced enamel 
 colour. In H ungary they constantly use garnet-coloured 
 purple to go with actual garnets, and everywhere the 
 brighter colours of more precious rubies, sapphires, and 
 emeralds are employed, if not to match the stones to har- 
 monise with them, or if not that to serve as a foil to them. 
 
 Indeed, it is quite a common thing for the key of the 
 enameller's colour composition to be set by the more or 
 less precious stones in use, and especially by those in 
 vogue. The element of taste comes also into considera- 
 tion, especially in the discreet use of black and white and 
 
202 
 
 pale grey in Renaissance jewellery, and to 
 some extent the element of symbolism, as in 
 the marked preference for black and white 
 shown in Spanish and other work of the 
 seventeenth century (iii). 
 
 But there were also very practical con- 
 siderations at work in the determination of 
 the colours the enameller should use ; and, 
 though in early days it may have been always 
 the desire to get something like coral, tur- 
 quoise, lapis, ruby, sapphire, or emerald, 
 which was the incentive to experiment in 
 colour, it was the available colour, the colour 
 easy to get and easy to work, which would 
 be the one most commonly employed. 
 
 The palette was, so to speak, passed on. 
 Additions to it were rare, and made at 
 long intervals. It was centuries before 
 gold purple was discovered, and then a 
 century or two before chrome green came 
 into use. Eventually enamellers used 
 everywhere much the same colours. Ura- 
 nium and selenium for yellow and iridium 
 for black, are discoveries of our own day. 
 With chemists annually introducing to us 
 new elements, there seems some danger 
 now of an embarrassment of colour riches. 
 However, the book of the past is there, 
 written in the work done. What has it to 
 tell us ? In one way, not very much. 
 Careful tabulation of the colours used at various epochs 
 and in various countries does not lead to anything very 
 definite. Fuller knowledge on the subject would, no 
 doubt, help us to determine when and where a given 
 piece of enamel was done ; but it is precisely the date 
 
 III. CHAIN 
 
 ENAMELLED 
 
 IN BLACK 
 
 AND WHITE, 
 
 NATIONAL 
 
 MUSEUM, 
 
 BUDA-PESTH. 
 
203 
 
 and derivation of the pieces that would be most helpful 
 in this matter, about which there is most doubt; and 
 sometimes the enamel is in such a state of decay that 
 we can only guess at what the colour was. 
 
 The colours universally employed in what we call 
 barbaric enamel — British, Gaulish, Celtic, or whatever 
 it may be — are first of all sealing-wax red, cobalt blue, 
 dark green, yellow varying from orange and lemon to 
 an ochreish tint, and white and black. There is also 
 found a greenish powder too far gone in decay to 
 identify, but suggestive of turquoise, a colour said to be 
 characteristic of ancient Russian work. The colours 
 in the Pinguente bottle (page 19) are blue, orange, and 
 red. In the Roman altar (overleaf) they are blue, 
 green, red, and pale green of the powdery description. 
 The red is often in very bad condition also. The 
 translucent colours in Irish work are puzzling, unless 
 they are millefiori glass, which I am inclined to think 
 they are. 
 
 Some slight progressive change may be traced in 
 the palette of the Byzantine enamellers. They had 
 from the first translucent sapphire blue and emerald 
 green, much used for backgrounds, ruby red, manganese 
 violet or purple, opaque sealing-wax or coral red, black, 
 and white, which was used for flesh. 
 
 Towards the eleventh century light blue was intro- 
 duced, either of an ashen tint (cobalt) or turquoise, 
 lemon or Naples yellow, and a pinkish flesh tint 
 sometimes inclining to yellow, the variation in which 
 seems to have been a matter of accident. 
 
 In the twelfth century work, turquoise, green, and red 
 are prominent ; but it is probable that the tenth century 
 enamellers had all these colours in their palette. 
 Though evidently preferring in the main translucent 
 colours, they used also opaque ones for want of them, 
 
204 
 
 and produced very pretty effects of ornament in dead 
 colours upon a lively translucent green ground. 
 
 The colours first used in Limoges appear to have been 
 blue, green, and red. Already in the twelfth century 
 we have also lighter tints or half-tones, together with 
 
 112. ROMAN CHAMPLEVE BRONZE ALTAR, FOUND IN BRITAIN, 
 NOW IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 
 
205 
 
 purple and iron grey. The full palette is made up of 
 blue, from very deep to lapis and light blue ; sealing- 
 wax red, varying toward chocolate ; green ; yellow green; 
 white; and manganese purple. This last is inclined to 
 be semi-translucent. Mixed with white, it makes a 
 granular and rather unpleasant purple grey, which 
 occurs in a very pale tint as a flesh colour. A deep 
 smalt ground is characteristic, and blue is altogether 
 the predominant colour, especially in the thirteenth 
 century. In the twelfth that also is sometimes slightly 
 translucent. Afterwards the colours are consistently 
 opaque. 
 
 The Rhenish and other German enamellers used 
 much the same colours as those of Limoges, but they 
 were not so faithful to the cobalt ground as the French. 
 They made abundant use of turquoise, and were greatly 
 given to the use of green and Naples yellow. Black 
 also they employed. 
 
 The palette of the Chinese was practically the 
 mediaeval one ; and they too made lavish use of lapis 
 and turquoise blues. They had two opaque reds, the 
 one sealing-wax colour, the other more like the potter's 
 opaque variety of so-called *' sang-de-boeuf." Their 
 lemon yellow, green, and yellow green were those of the 
 European enamellers. The mauve tint occurring in 
 their work may be due to cobalt and a little manganese ; 
 but the rose-pink is, on the face of it, akin to that in 
 porcelain of the " famille rose," that is to say, a gold 
 colour. Black and white they have, of course ; but 
 their white is at the best not very pure, and in early 
 work it is pitted with air-holes. Certain drab or muddy 
 tints which occur in Chinese work may be set down to 
 accident. 
 
 The Japanese worked in much the same colours as 
 the Chinese ; but the result was decidedly lower in tone. 
 
2o6 
 owing partly to the predominance of a dark green, 
 often used as a ground. 
 
 In Russian and Hungarian work in wire-enamel, on 
 silver, both opaque and translucent enamels, never very 
 clear, are used, often in combination ; and the sight of 
 opaque yellow, green, blue, white, and black at once 
 suggests the influence of these countries. The same 
 colours occur, however, in German enamel on silver and 
 in the seventeenth century English brass-work. A differ- 
 ence noted by Hampel between Russian and Hungarian 
 colour is, that there was used in Hungary, but not in 
 Russia, an opaque red, which after the sixteenth 
 century died out, when yellow took its place. 
 
 One's impression, formed in the museums of Buda- 
 Pesth and Vienna, is that in both countries the colour 
 scheme inclines to be cold. Green, blue, and yellow 
 seem to predominate. The nearest approach to red, 
 that lives in one's memory, is manganese purple. 
 
 The only peculiarity in the colour of " Basse Taille " 
 was that it was naturally confined to translucent colours, 
 except where, in early days, they made sparing use of an 
 opaque sealing-wax red, for want of anything like its 
 equivalent in clear colour. After the discovery of the 
 gold " purple of Cassius " they used that. 
 
 The Indian enamellers had in addition to the usual 
 translucent colours, and some opaque ones, a very 
 beautiful ruby, sometimes called Jaipur red, which, it 
 seems, is really an iron yellow stained with copper. It 
 is singularly beautiful in colour; and they rely at Delhi 
 greatly upon this ruby colour, a copper emerald colour, 
 and opaque white. In Kashmir they depend chiefly 
 upon cobalt blue, copper green, and turquoise. In any 
 case they restrict themselves, or are restricted, in the 
 number of colours they employ. Apart from India, 
 the enamel of Central Asia seems to have been opaque. 
 
207 
 
 The pioneers in enamel painting, as distinct from 
 goldsmith's enamelling, used, in addition to the clear 
 blue, green, purple, and yellow of the Byzantine 
 enamellers, an opaque red, which rises up above the 
 other colours just as Rhodian red stands up above 
 the transparent colours in Persian pottery. If it is 
 not the same substance, it must be something very 
 like it. It occurs also in fifteenth century enamel. 
 For their flesh tints they used manganese purple 
 and white. Later they used, besides translucent 
 colours, turquoise, lemon, and other opaque tints 
 upon white. 
 
 Every enameller, of course, wants to know what are 
 the possibilities in the way of enamel colour, and we 
 need not reckon it to him as a fault if he makes the 
 most of his material. It would be against nature and 
 against art not to revel in rich colour. But that is far 
 from saying he should never stop short of the full 
 possibilities afforded by his medium. Restraint is 
 everywhere a quality. And it is to be noted that 
 where, by exception, the artist has confined himself to 
 a modest scheme, it not only arrests attention, but 
 satisfies the taste of the "gourmet," as distinct from the 
 ''gourmand," in colour. Quiet combinations of black 
 and white and gold give so little scope that they are 
 justified rather by their significance than by their effect, 
 and certain blue and white Chinese enamel is perhaps 
 too suggestive of porcelain to satisfy a keen appetite for 
 vitreous colour ; but the work of Delhi and Kashmir, 
 already referred to, is enough to show how rich and yet 
 how reticent enamel may be ; and I have memories of 
 simple schemes — cobalt blues and olive greens upon 
 white; cobalt, turquoise, cool green and black, on 
 white ; white, turquoise, and green upon cobalt — which 
 are a joy for ever. One of the most beautiful pieces of 
 
208 
 
 113. FRENCH OR ITALIAN ONYX VESSEL, JEWELLED & ENAMELLED, 
 NOW IN THE KUNST HISTORISCHES MUSEUM AT VIENNA, 
 
209 
 
 mediaeval work I ever saw was in varied shades of blue 
 and green upon white, and one of the most delicate 
 pieces of late French work was in translucent green 
 and yellow in association with white. 
 
 The great goldsmiths of the Renaissance were some- 
 times very sparing in their use of colour, subordinating 
 it to the more precious jewels. There is something very 
 artful in the way they will use chiefly white next natural 
 stones, or in other ways keep colour and jewels apart, as, 
 for example, where the links of a chain or bracelet are 
 alternately jewelled and enamelled. In the beautiful 
 onyx vessel opposite, the discreet reliance upon white 
 strapwork and gold filigree on a black ground gives 
 extraordinary value to the jewels caught in the meshes 
 of the ornament. 
 
 It would be easy to multiply examples ; but enough 
 has been said to call attention to the possible advantage 
 of a more sparing use of colour than we commonly 
 indulge in. It seems to be thought that, because bright 
 colour is to be got in enamel, the brighter the better, 
 and the more of it the more beautiful. There is wisdom 
 in the paradox that the half is more than the whole — 
 sometimes. 
 
 E. 
 
XXVI. THE METAL AND THE PALETTE. 
 
 Enamellers seem in certain districts, or at certain 
 periods, to have been restricted in their choice of 
 colour, so much so that we sometimes associate a 
 particular colour scheme with a particular school. 
 
 Their work profits, no doubt, by its reticence, if 
 reticence it was. It is open to doubt, however, whether 
 it was so much artistic conscience which held them in 
 check as inability to go further. Working on a basis 
 of bronze, for example, they had no option in the matter. 
 Only opaque colours were within their range, though in 
 the twelfth century they seem to have happened upon 
 translucency in their manganese purple. Such choice 
 as they had was guided by a desire to imitate natural 
 stones ; and their colour composition would inevitably 
 be affected by the consideration of using together only 
 such colours as could safely be fired at one heat ; but 
 the factor there was no controlling was, the metal on 
 which the enamelling was done. On gold itself 
 enamellers could not get all colours translucent — some 
 of the oxides employed in colouring glass themselves 
 destroy its translucency — and they were obliged to 
 make shift with an opaque substitute which, like the 
 red employed by fifteenth century Limoges painters (it 
 looks as if it were actually the fine iron-stained earth 
 known in Persian pottery as Rhodian red), never seemed 
 quite at home in the midst of brilliantly translucent 
 tints. Still they used translucent colours when 
 they could ; and we associate enamel on gold with 
 
211 
 
 translucent colours, and opaque colour with bronze 
 or brass, in the composition of which there was tin 
 enough to dull it. Iron also compelled a narrow range 
 of opaque colour. 
 
 Silver and gold not only allowed of brilliant colour, 
 but enhanced its brilliancy by the way they shone 
 through it. Translucent colour of a rather dull sort 
 on copper was made brighter by means of an under- 
 layer of opaque white enamel, the tin in which, not 
 being in the form of metal, did not injuriously affect it. 
 The use of some metals which might otherwise suggest 
 themselves to the enameller is ruled out of account by 
 the fact that their melting point is lower than that of 
 enamel. 
 
 Opaque enamel, then, may be on any metal infusible 
 enough to stand the heat of the enamel kiln. 
 
 Translucent colour is most perfectly developed on 
 gold, which, by the way, stands the fire better than any 
 other metal ; but an alloy of gold and silver, or silver 
 by itself, admits also of translucent colour. On copper 
 the clear colours show to less advantage. 
 
 The Byzantine enamellers worked nearly always 
 either on gold or on an alloy of gold and silver. The 
 objection to pure silver is that its melting point is so little 
 higher than that of some enamels that there is a certain 
 amount of risk with it. That it loses something of its 
 brilliancy in the fire does not so much matter. Trans- 
 lucent blue on gold shows slightly greenish. This is 
 avoided by underlaying the blue with silver foil. Gold 
 or silver foil may also be used to prevent the contact of 
 the colour with anything in a baser metal which would 
 tarnish it. 
 
 In practice enamellers seldom denied themselves 
 the luxury of translucent colour when they could 
 get it. When they could not, they had to content 
 
 P 2 
 
212 
 
 themselves with opaque. It was not so much a matter 
 of choice with them as of chemical possibility. They 
 sometimes seem to get a certain degree of translucency 
 (in copper green, for example, manganese purple, and 
 cobalt blue), as it were by accident, in the midst of 
 colours for the rest opaque. 
 
 Enamellers on silver did not as a rule confine them- 
 selves to translucent colour. They would use, for 
 
 114. CHINESE ENAMEL ON SILVER. 
 
 example, transparent blue, green, and turquoise in 
 association with opaque lilac, lemon, and pale green. 
 The Russians, who worked largely in silver, kept very 
 much to cold colours, such as blue, green, turquoise, 
 and pale yellow, having presumably no available red. 
 
 If any proof were necessary to show that the use 
 of opaque colours was compulsory upon the Chinese, 
 working as they did upon brassy bronze, it would be 
 afforded by the fact that when they work in silver, as 
 in some of their jewellery (114), they use colour as trans- 
 lucent as they can get it. It is always a little cloudy, 
 
213 
 
 which may be due to impurities in the ore ; the silver 
 has often the heavy look of pewter. It is possible that 
 the much lower tone of old Japanese enamel colour, as 
 compared with Chinese, was less a question of taste 
 (although as colourists the Japanese are not to be com- 
 pared with the Chinese) than of the composition of 
 their bronze, which made it more difficult to get bright 
 colour. It is not likely that the Japanese would use 
 precisely the same composition for their thin beaten 
 vessels as the Chinese for their thick cast ones. 
 
 Enamel colours upon brass are usually crude as well 
 as opaque, and they are the same harsh tints everywhere. 
 Black, white, two shades of blue, chrome green, and a 
 manganese purple brown not quite devoid of translucency , 
 occur no matter where. In Albanian work we get seal- 
 ing-wax red, orange, and chrome-like yellow, and in 
 Russian, in addition to them, turquoise. English work 
 was commonly confined to two colours and black or 
 white. The exceptionally brilliant, semi-translucent 
 green ground in some brass stirrups in the Wallace 
 collection seems to have been got by laying it over a 
 foundation of tin white. 
 
 Enamelled iron is not, as some may suppose, the 
 invention of the modern advertiser. The Chinese 
 employed it to more artistic purpose, and there are 
 remains of Gallo-Roman work said to be as early as 
 perhaps the third century; but it cannot be said to 
 amount to anything worth artistic consideration. 
 
215 
 
 INDEX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Air bubbles 121,205 
 
 Albanian 213 
 
 Altar (Roman) .. 20,21,203 
 Altenstetter (David) . . 103 
 Angermaier (Christopher) . . 103 
 Anglo-Saxon goldsmith's 
 
 work . . . . 29, 30, 56, 78 
 Antimony . . . . 194, 195, 197 
 ApPLiQut embroidery .. 116,117 
 Arabian ware . . .... 52 
 
 Armenia 54 
 
 Arsenic 198, 199 
 
 Asia (Central) 206 
 
 Assyria 54 
 
 Balkan Peninsula (The) . . 50 
 Barbarian enamel (Early) . . 54 
 Barbaric work . . 21, 56, 77, 203 
 Basse taille . . . . loi et seq., 
 5, 48, 100, 108, 151, 206 
 Battersea . . . . 186, 187, 188 
 
 Bibracte 17 
 
 Black . . 195, 196, 197, 199, 202 
 Blended colours . . 140 et seq. 
 
 Blowpipe 4. 13 
 
 Blue 8, 197, 198 
 
 (See also turquoise and cobalt.) 
 
 Bock, Dr. F 28, 116 
 
 Brass ... . . 100, 206, 211, 213 
 
 Brasses 79, 80 
 
 " Braun-email " 79 
 
 British 29, 56, 203 
 
 Bronze . . 20, 21, 40, 44, 46, 76, 
 77,88, 149, 210, 211,212, 213 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Bronze cloisons 44 
 
 Bronzeworker . . . . 67, 88 
 
 Bry (Theodor de) 103 
 
 BuDA Pesth . . . . 29, 98, 206 
 
 Burgos cathedral 47 
 
 Burgundian cups . . . , 165 
 
 BUSHELL (Dr.) 96 
 
 Byzantine .. .. 28 et seq., 21, 
 37, 40, 49, 78, 86, 91, 108, 
 116, 117, 140, 203,207, 211 
 
 ,, CLOISONNE. .28 ^^ S^^., 
 
 63 et seq., 14, 27, 43, 45, 
 49, 62, 82, 84, 91, 92 
 
 ,, GOLDSMITH (The) 56, 
 
 61, 62, 70 
 
 Canton enamel . . . . i88, 190 
 
 Casting 98, 100 
 
 Caucasus 54 
 
 Celtic . . 16, 24, 26, 77, 78, 82, 
 149. 203 
 
 Cement 8, 10, 60, 62 
 
 Champleve . . 42 ^^ seq., 67 et 
 
 seq., 20,94,95,96, 109, 
 
 122, 124, 126, 190 
 
 „ AND cloisonne 82 
 
 et seq., 44, 45, 46, 67 
 
 JEWELLERY . . 21 
 
 Champleve on silver . . . . 40 
 
 Chartres 180, 184 
 
 Chasing . . 68, 73, 74, 78, 84, 95, 
 
 102, 136, 190 
 
 China (Introduction of enamel 
 
 into) 50, 51, 52 
 
2l6 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chinese . . 52, 65, 8g. 90, 95, 
 
 96, 98, 109, 112, 121, 126, 
 
 146, 188, 189, 190, 205, 
 
 207, 212, 213 
 
 „ CLOISONNE .. 51, 52, 
 
 77, 84, 86, 108, 121 
 
 Chosroes (The cup of). . .. 56 
 
 Chromium , . . . 195, 197, 198 
 
 Classification 4 
 
 Cloisonne .. 61 etseq., 13, 60, 
 
 82, 84, 95, 108, no, 
 
 1X2, 122, 166 
 
 ,, (Byzantine) 63 ei seq., 
 
 14, 27, 49, 91. 
 
 92 
 
 and Champleve 44, 
 
 45. 46 
 
 ,. design . . . . 84 
 
 ,, enamel upon 
 
 porcelain, .66, 147, 
 
 148 
 
 ,, jewellery. .55 f/ s^^., 
 
 8. 67, 82 
 
 Clcisons.. .. 44,46,61,63, 
 
 64, 67, 86, 91, 92, 96, 
 
 112, 166 
 
 (avoidance of) . . 66 
 
 Cobalt . . 194, 195, 197, 198, 
 
 199, 212 
 
 Cologne . . 38 
 
 Colour . . 193 et seq., 201 ei seq., 
 58, 192 
 
 Conques 96 
 
 Copper . . 195, 197, 198, 199, 
 
 211 
 cloisons . . . . 46, 67 
 
 Coppersmith 67, 84 
 
 Copper wire 46 
 
 Coral (Imitation of) .. 16,56 
 Court (Susanne) . . , . 154, 158 
 Courteys (The) . . . . 158, 172 
 „ (Jean) . . . . 154, 160 
 
 (Pierre) . . 160, 180 
 Crown (The Iron) , . . . 28 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Crown of Charlemagne . . 91 
 ,, of Constantia .. .. 36 
 , , of Constantine Mono- 
 
 machus. ... 36, 91 
 
 of Rudolf II 150 
 
 of S. Stephen .. ..29, 
 
 98, 131 
 
 ,, from Guarrazar .. 56 
 
 Crystal (Inlay on) . . 56, 58 
 
 Cunynghame (H. H.) .. 184, 193 
 
 Cup (The Augsburg) . . . . 103 
 
 ,, of Chosroes .. ..56, 132 
 
 ,, of the Kings of France 
 
 and England . . . . 106 
 
 Decomposition 20 
 
 Delhi 60, 206, 207 
 
 Demetrius Tafel .. ..93, 
 
 94. 135 
 
 Design and process . . . . 84 
 
 for cloisonne . . . . 84 
 
 Detail 64, 65 
 
 '• Devil's ware" 52 
 
 Digging out 23 
 
 Dresden 186 
 
 Early enamels 2,54 
 
 Eastern enamel . . 50 etseq., 118, 
 
 120 
 ,, origin of enamel .. 30, 
 
 31. 52, 54 
 
 Egypt 54 
 
 Egyptian . . 7, 8, 62, 67, 82, 
 
 146, 150 
 
 ,, glassworking . . 10 
 
 Eighth century . . . . 27, 28 
 
 Eighteenth century . . loi, 107, 
 
 126, 136, 186, 190 
 
 Eleventh century . . 23, 28, 
 
 29, 96, 140, 203 
 
 Enamel (what it is) . . i, 193 
 
 ,, and glass . .55, 56, 58 
 
 and goldsmith's 
 
 work. . . . 32, 34 
 
PAGE 
 
 Enamel and precious 
 
 STONES . . . • 58 
 
 COLOUR .. I, 3, 55, 58, 
 
 207 
 ,, PASTE . . . . 23, 24 
 „ PLAQUES ON STUFF 35 
 ,, UPON MOTHER-OF- 
 PEARL 148 
 
 Encaustic 79 
 
 Encloisoned glass and stones 
 
 55 et seq., 18, 32 
 
 England 40 
 
 English . . . , 100, 144, 206, 213 
 
 Engraving . . . .68, 74, 75, 84, 
 
 loi, 103 
 
 "Enresille" .. i^yetseq. 
 
 Etching 81 
 
 Etruscan 14, 61 
 
 Fifth Century .. .. 21,32 
 
 Fifteenth Century . . 63, 104, 
 
 129, 136, 153, 165, 166, 
 
 207, 210 
 
 Figure design (Mediaeval) . . 70 
 
 Figures in relief 72 
 
 Filigree.. .. 14,60,112,113, 
 
 117, 119, 129, 209 
 
 ,, ENAMEi 49, 117 
 
 FiNIFT 50 
 
 Finish 121 
 
 Fire-polished . . . . 96, 109 
 
 Firing 4, 196 
 
 Flemish 148 
 
 Flesh . . . . 72, 156, 157, 158, 
 
 167, 183, 184, 185, 203, 205, 207 
 
 Foil 154, 166 
 
 Fourth century . . . . 13, 21 
 
 Fourteenth century . . 52, 104, 
 
 106, 135 
 
 France 38, 40 
 
 Frankish 21 
 
 French .. 96, loi, 103, 107,144, 
 148, 187, 188, 205, 2og 
 
 „ champleve . . . . 76 
 
 17 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Fretted work .. .. 96,118, 
 119, 149 
 
 Furnace 4 
 
 Fusibility 4 
 
 Fusion 61,62,193 
 
 Gallo-Rhenish 146 
 
 Gallo-Roman .. 21,22,46, 
 
 144. 213 
 
 Gaulish 16, 21, 203 
 
 Geometric design . . . . 22, 23 
 
 German . . 49, 50, 72, 79, 98, 
 
 103, 108, 118, 140, 166, 
 
 186, 205, 206 
 
 ,, champleve . . 45, 76 
 
 Germany 37.38 
 
 Gilding 76, 77, 79 
 
 Glass .. . . 2, 17. 25, 27, 55, 
 
 193. 194 
 
 ,, and enamel . . 2, 24, 
 
 26, 55, 56, 58 
 
 „ INLAY . . ID, 21, 23, 58, 
 59 
 ., „ ON POTTERY . . ID 
 146 
 ,, ,, ON SOAPSTONE lO 
 ,, MOSAIC 22 
 
 Glass-blower and jeweller 14 
 Glassworker and enameller 17, 
 18, 20 
 and metal- 
 worker 18, 19 
 
 Glazing with translucent 
 
 colour 178 
 
 Gold. . . . 44, 47, 86, 150, 156, 
 
 164, 172, 195, 210 
 
 ,, cloisons . . 44, 46, 67 
 
 Gold foil .. .. 154,166,211 
 
 paint .. .. 154,156,166 
 
 ,, ruby 196 
 
 Goldsmith . . 3, 27, 61, 
 
 82, 89, 135 
 ,, and bronze 
 
 worker . . 43, 44, 46, 86, 88 
 
2l8 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Gothic enamel . . . .37 ^^ 5^?-. 
 82, 140 
 
 Gratz 103 
 
 Gradation of colour . . 103, 104, 
 106, 143 
 
 GRiECO-ROMAN 26 
 
 Gr^co-Russian 49 
 
 Greek .. 8,14,15,25,82,114 
 
 Greeks (The) 61,134 
 
 Green .. ..195,197,198,202 
 
 Grey 195 
 
 Grisaille . . 167 et seq., 5, 164 
 Grisaille (Tinted) .. ijyetseq. 
 Grounding out . . 67, 74, 81, 
 82, 102 
 Guarrazar (The crown from) 56 
 
 Hamilton brooch . . . . 30 
 
 Hampel, Dr 120 
 
 Heads in relief 74 
 
 HiLDESHEiM 37 
 
 HiRTu (Jacques) 78 
 
 Hispano-Flemish lOI 
 
 Hungarian .. 49,112,113,116, 
 
 117, 118, 119, 120, 124, 136, 166, 
 
 188, 201, 206 
 
 HUY 38 
 
 Hyderabad 94 
 
 Imitation .. 55,56,148,190, 
 
 201, 202, 210 
 
 „ cloisonne . . . . 42 
 
 Incrustation . . . . 56, 135, 159. 
 
 161 
 
 Incrusted enamel . . 133 et seq- 
 
 Indian . . 52, 78, 95, 97, 98, 
 
 loi, 102, 119, 148, 206 
 
 Indo-China 12 
 
 Inlay .. 8,10,21,23,46,56, 
 80, 150 
 
 Inlaid enamel 67 
 
 Inscriptions in gold wire . . 65 
 Iridium . . . . 195, 196, 197, 202 
 Irish 25, 203 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Iron . . 194, 195, 197, 198, 199. 
 211, 213 
 
 ,, crown 28 
 
 Italian 40, 79, 174 
 
 Italy 40, 48, 104 
 
 Jade (Inlay on) . . . . 56, 58 
 Jaipur . . 60, 78, 102, 124, 197, 
 
 206 
 
 Janssen 187 
 
 Japan 52 
 
 Japanese.. .. 66, 89, 139, 146, 
 
 205, 213 
 
 ,, cloisonne .. 84,110, 
 
 ,, pattern work . . 65 
 
 Jewellery . . . . 8, 21, 25, 26 
 
 ,, and textiles . . 36 
 
 John of Pisa 104 
 
 " Kalt-email " 81 
 
 Kashmir . . . . 94, 95, 206, 207 
 
 Kiln 17, 196 
 
 Klosterneuburg 142 
 
 KONDAKOW, N . . 12, 28, 31 , 50, 64, 
 
 92, 134, 146 
 
 Lahore 52 
 
 La Tene period 18 
 
 Laune (Etienne de) . . . . 149 
 
 Lavender 199 
 
 Lead . . . . 194, 195. i97 
 
 Lemans 140 
 
 Leonard Limousin . . 5, 156, 
 
 170, 172, 174, 177, 180, 
 
 182, 184, 185 
 
 Lilac 198 
 
 Limoges . . 23, 38, 40, 42, 47, 48, 
 
 74, 104,114,143,146, 
 
 151, 168, 204, 210 
 
 Liverpool 186 
 
 lombardic 28 
 
 LucKNow .. .. 78,102,119 
 
219 
 
 PAGE PAGE 
 
 LuTHMER (Ferdinand) . . 79, 116, Museums (contd.) : — 
 
 171 London (British Mu- 
 
 Lyte jewel (The) . . 60, 78, 136 seum). .8, 10, 13, 14, 
 
 16, 106, 118, 126, 
 
 JJ^°^^^ 56 142,158.164,189 
 
 Maestricht 38 ^^ (Victoria and Albert 
 
 Makeshift (Enamel regarded Museum) 21 
 
 ^^^) 58,59.60 26, 36,' 78! 
 
 Manganese . . 157, 158, 194, ^^9, 142, 166 
 
 195, 196, 197, 108, ^^ (Wallace Collec- 
 
 ^99,212 ti^„) ..187,213 
 
 M^^^^^s 6°' ^°' 8^ Munich (National Mu- 
 
 Mauve 199 3eum) 100 
 
 Medieval enamel ..37.^5.^., Nuremberg (Germanic 
 
 70, 72, 84, 95. 108, 153, Museum) .. 36,98,146 
 
 205. 209 p^j^jg (Bibliotheque 
 
 Merovingian 22,56 Nationale) 22, 36, 56, 
 
 Metal, The (and the palette) 210 ^ 
 
 ,.,, , '^'7, n (Cluny) .. .. 21,36, 
 
 „ as a foil to colour ..86 j- jg^ 
 
 Milan (S. Ambrogio) .... 29 ^^ (Louvre) . . 10, 36, 
 
 "Millefiore" glass .. 23, 24, 92,101,136,139. 
 
 26, 27, 203 j6o^ j8o 
 
 Miniaturists (The) .... 187 ^^ (Mus^c des Arts 
 
 Mogul work .. .. 56,58.148 Decoratifs) 107,150 
 
 Monte Cassino .. .. 28,40 ^^ (Petit Palais) .. 67 
 
 Montpelier 104 Rouj.j^ 24 
 
 Monument of Archbishop S.Germain .. .. 17,18 
 
 Maurice 47 g. Petersburg (The 
 
 Monza 28 Hermitage) 52 
 
 Mosaic (Glass) 22 Vienna (Gewerbs 
 
 Mount Athos 50 Museum).. 43,92. 
 
 " Beuvray 17 ^3^ ^^o 
 
 MuLTAN 98 ^^ (Kunst Histor- 
 
 Museums:— isches Museum) 
 
 Berlin (Gewerbs Mu- 16, 21, 81 
 
 seum) 118 „ (Imperial 
 
 BuDA Pesth (National Treasury).. 29, 
 
 Museum) .. .. 36,91 35592,116,150 
 Cologne (Gewerbs Mycenean Period . . . . 14 
 Museum) . . 63, 79, 164 
 
 Dublin 26 Neapolitan goldsmith's on- 
 
 Florence (Bargello) . . 36, lay 109 
 
 107 Niello 78, 79 
 
220 
 
 Ninth century 28 
 
 NOUAILHER (CoULY) . . 153, I56 
 
 Old-gold colour . . . . 153, 199 
 ON-enamel painting . . 185^^5^^. 
 Opaque colours . . 196, 197, 
 203, 205, 206. 210^^ seq. 
 „ enamel . . 21, 36, 123 
 " Opus Ragusanum " .. .. 49 
 
 Orange 
 
 Oriental 
 
 " Oriental-European 
 Oriental influence 
 Origin of enamel . . 
 
 • •• 195 
 . .. 94 
 " ■• 50 
 . .. 56 
 
 • 2,3, 16, 
 30, 31. 54 
 
 " Paillons " 154 
 
 Painted cloisonne . . . . 122 etseq. 
 
 enamel , . . . 122, 126, 
 
 151 et seq. 
 
 Painting (on enamel) . .185^^5^^, 
 
 „ (Pate-sur-pate) . . 157, 
 
 167, 168, 170, 186 
 
 ,, in Grisaille . . . . 164, 
 
 167 et seq. 
 
 in translucent 
 
 colours.. .. 151 etseq., 177 
 
 Pala d'Oro (The) . . 29, 36, 65, 
 
 92 
 Palette (changes in the) 
 
 201 et seq. 
 „ of the enameller 
 
 193 et seq. 
 
 Palliotto at Milan 29 
 
 Paris 38, 40. 186 
 
 Paste 3. 23, 24, 193 
 
 PAte-sur-Pate painting . . 157, 
 
 167, 168, 170, 186 
 
 Penicaud (Jean I.) , .152, 153, 
 
 156, 177 
 
 (Jean II.) .. .. 156, 
 
 171, 178, 180 
 
 ,. (J. Ill) .. .. 176.184 
 
 .. (J.B.) 153 
 
 PAGE 
 5. 152, 
 156, 157 
 .. 123 
 
 Penicaud (Nardon) 
 
 153. 154. 
 
 Pencilling 
 
 Perforated porcelain. . .. 131 
 
 Perm (The find at) . . . . 52 
 
 Persian . . 32, 52, 54, 78, 124, 
 
 164, 165, 190, 191, 201 
 
 ,, origin of enamel . . 31, 
 
 32,52 
 
 Petitot 5, 187 
 
 Petrossa (The find at) . . 56 
 
 Pewter 213 
 
 Phinipt 50 
 
 Phcenicians 54 
 
 "Picking out" 156 
 
 Pictorial work . . 106, 107, 
 
 174 
 Pinguente flask .. 20, 21, 203 
 
 Pink 184, 197 
 
 Pisa (John of) 104 
 
 Pitted 121 
 
 Plantagenet panel . . . . 140 
 
 Plaques of painted enamel . , 158 
 
 „ (Small Byzantine) 32, 
 
 33 et seq. 
 
 (Small Gothic) . . 47 
 
 Plique a jour i2g etseq. 
 
 Polish .. ..108,109,110,121 
 PoPELiN (Claudius) . . . . 176 
 Porcelain .. 186 et seq., 2oy 
 Precious stones . . . .2, 55, 56, 
 201, 202 
 
 Punched ground 118 
 
 Purple . . 194, 197, 199, 202, 
 
 212 
 „ of Cassius . . 197, 198 
 
 Ragusa 49 
 
 Rajputana 97 
 
 Red enamel (Early) . . 20, 21 
 Red . . 20, 21, 153, 164, 184, 
 
 195, 197 
 Reddish colour in old work 12 
 Relief 72, 74, 106 
 
221 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Reliquary of Pepin of 
 
 Aquitaine 96 
 
 Renaissance 61, 136 
 
 ,, goldsmith's 
 
 work 78, 202, 209 
 
 REPOUSsfe . . 85. 91 et seq., 122 
 "Reserved" .. 68, 70, 72 
 Reymond (Pierre). . 171, 172, 177, 
 180, 184 
 Rhenish . . 23, 40, 76, 142, 143, 
 
 205 
 
 Roman 21, 203 
 
 „ glass mosaic . . 22, 23 
 Romano-British . . 21, 26, 144 
 Ruby . . . . 154, 195, 196, 197 
 Russia .... .... . . 54 
 
 Russian 50, 100, 112, 
 
 113, 116, 119, 120, 123, 131, 
 203, 206, 212, 213 
 
 St. Bernwald 37 
 
 S. Denis 38 
 
 S. MiCKLOS treasure . . . . i6 
 Scandinavian work . . . . 131 
 Scraping out . . . . 168, 171, 172 
 Scratching out lines . . . . 144 
 Selenium .. ..195, 196, 197, 
 
 202 
 
 Seventh century . . . . 27, 32 
 
 Seventeenth century . . 52, 100, 
 
 102, 108, 119, 123, 124, 126, 
 
 186. 187, 188, 202, 206 
 
 Sgraffito 144, 156 
 
 Shading .. ..104, 124, 142, 165 
 Shield found in the Thames 16 
 
 „ of Charles IX i6o 
 
 Sicilian . . . .28, 29, 36, 92, 114 
 
 Silver . . 21, 40, 48, 195, 197, 
 
 198, 199, 211, 212, 213 
 
 Silver foil 154,211 
 
 Sixth century 28, 32 
 
 Sixteenth century . . 103, 108, 
 
 118, 124, 135, 166, 167, 
 
 177, 180, 206 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Slavonic work . . . . 50, 54 
 Society of Antiquaries . . 146 
 
 Soda 195,197,198 
 
 Soldering .. .. 61,62,66 
 
 Spanish .. .. .. 63,108,202 
 
 Stained glass and enamel . . 42, 
 
 43 
 
 Stamping 98 
 
 " Still " colour 5 
 
 Suger (Abbot) 38 
 
 Sweden 54 
 
 Tapes of metal . . 62, 68, 108 
 Technique (Rediscovery of) 15 
 
 Tegernsee 38 
 
 Tenth century b.c. . . 14, 15 
 
 „ „ A.D. .. .. 29 
 
 Theodor de Bry . '. . . . . 103 
 
 Theophano 37, 38 
 
 Thibet 189 
 
 Thibetan 121 
 
 Third century 20 
 
 Thirteenth century . . 23, 36, 
 
 40, 47. 74, 76. 79, 140. 205 
 
 Tin . . 194, 196, 197, 198, 
 
 199, 211 
 
 „ enamel . . 168, 172, 190 
 
 Tinted grisaille . . 177 ^/ seq. 
 
 Tomb of William de Valence 40 
 
 TouTiN (Jean) 187 
 
 Translucent and opaque . . 36, 
 
 loi, 124 
 
 „ champleve . . lOI, 
 
 102, 104 
 
 „ COLOUR, loi et seq., 
 
 122, 123, 196, 197, 
 
 205, 206, 210^/ Sf^. 
 
 „ COLOUR ON 
 
 SILVER . . 48 
 ,, ENAMEL. . 36, 129 
 
 153 
 „ INCRUSTATION l6l 
 
 „ PATTERN-WORK 25 
 
222 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Tr^.ves 37. 38 
 
 Troves 142 
 
 Turanian origin of enamel 31, 
 
 52 
 
 Turkey 50 
 
 Turkish work 119 
 
 Turquoise (Imitation of) . . 56 
 
 Turquoise blue . . . . 195, 197 
 
 Twelfth century., 38, 43, 72, 
 
 79, 140, 142, 146, 203, 
 
 204, 205, 210 
 
 Unpolished 
 Uranium . . 
 
 . .110, 118, 121 
 195, 196, 197, 202 
 
 PAGK 
 
 Venice (S. Mark's Treasury) 32 
 
 Verdun 38 
 
 ,, altar 142 
 
 Vienna 148, 165, 206 
 
 Von Falke, Dr. O 44 
 
 Wax " enamel" 
 Westminster Abbey 
 Westphalian 
 White 
 
 Wire 
 
 enamel 
 
 .. 60 
 40,42 
 
 76 
 
 123, 124, 136, 153, 
 169, 170, 172, 197 
 112, 113, 114, 116 
 
 ..113 et seq.,50, 
 166, 206 
 
 Venetian enamel . . 79, 118, 136, 
 161 et seq. 
 
 Venice 40, 49 
 
 „ (S. Mark's) 29, 65, 92 
 
 Yellow 195,196,197, 
 
 198, 199, 202 
 
 Zinc 
 
 194 
 
 the end. 
 
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