WHILE it is true that few collectors of the present day can aspire to any goodly number of really fine examples of European enamels, the subject is nevertheless one of great interest, and the author believes there are many who will find pleasure in a study of the enamels of European fabrication, particularly those objects familiarly known as Limoges enamels but more properly to be called painted enamels to distinguish them from the cloisonnÉ and the champlevÉ enamels. It may be well to indicate here the characteristics of the several groups.

CloisonnÉ: As early as the time of the ancients it was found that to prevent the running together of molten glass enamels, little boundaries of metal wire could be devised for soldering on to the metal base to mark the divisions of the pattern, or merely to bound areas, thus forming a number of diminutive shallow “pans,” into which the melted flux expanded, and when cooled and polished revealed a surface level with the height of the wire cloisons, giving them the appearance of being metal wires that had been imbedded in the glass. Gold, being neutral to every known color, is the harmonizer paramount, and thus when gold cloisons were used, the various colors were knit together into esthetically pleasing surfaces. The little metal threads running through modern Japanese enamels are such cloisons. CloisonnÉ enamel is the earliest sort of true enamel known to us. It was the favorite Byzantine process, and also that of the Greeks, the Anglo-Saxons, the Chinese, and later of the Japanese and the Russians.

Relief CloisonnÉ. This term is used to designate those pieces wherein the enamel either is below or above the tops of the cloisons, or where only certain cloisons enclose enamel, or a combination of the three sorts, giving to the surface of an object completed in this manner an interesting uneven ground of smooth but unpolished enamel. The cloisons of much of this work, especially the Hungarian and the Russian, are of filigree wire, or twisted wire, instead of flat wire such as was used for this purpose by Byzantine craftsmen.

ChamplevÉ. This is the name given to the process of gouging out of a field (champ) of metal a number of hollows (lÉvÉes) or “ditches” for the pattern, in which cut-out depressions the vitreous color is fused and becomes enamel. It is akin to the ancient Egyptian method of scooping out surfaces in gold, soapstone, wool, and other materials, inserting therein bits of colored glass. Had the Egyptians practised true enameling, doubtless their process would have begun with champlevÉ, for they did not anticipate the Greek goldsmiths, who worked patterns on gold in cloisons long before they had any idea of applying vitreous color thereto. Indeed, the early Greeks and the Etruscans were wonderfully skilful at soldering gold. This champlevÉ process might be termed Gothic, succeeding in introduction though not superseding the Byzantine cloisonnÉ. However, centuries before Byzantine or Gothic works appeared, the Celts produced champlevÉ enamels.

RepoussÉ. This term is applied to the base of those objects wherein the ornament is beaten out, in silhouette as it were, in the metal and the details marked by cloisons let in. Much of this work is easily mistaken for champlevÉ, but where the pattern is scooped out in champlevÉ, it is beaten out in repoussÉ. One who has visited the treasury of St. Mark’s in Venice will recall that the plaquettes from a Gospel cover to be found there were executed in repoussÉ—the pattern simply hammered in the silver, which afterward was filled with translucent enamel. In Oriental repoussÉ work the metal divisions between the fields of enamel are beaten up, the reverse of the process just described. In modern Chinese enamel-work the repoussÉ process has superseded champlevÉ for effects of the sort.

Basse Taille. This is the process of engraving the ground, which is to receive translucent enamel, so that the lines made by the graver will show up through the translucent vitrified coating and produce a greater play of light, or define patterns, the veining of leaves, the marking of petals, the lines of draperies, etc. The French enamelers of the eighteenth century habitually employed the process, and Indian enamelers preceded them by at least a century, while its invention is ascribed to an Italian, John of Pisa, in 1286. This chasing or engraving upon gold or silver for the purpose of showing graduation in the vitreous color to be applied is akin to champlevÉ.

Plique À Jour. Enamels of this sort consist of certain screen-like objects in filigree with their unbacked cloison divisions filled up with translucent enamel. Plique À Jour enamel may be compared to stained-glass windows, the principle being the same, only carried out on a miniature scale. An excellent example of this is a fifteenth-century cup in the Victoria and Albert Museum, while the Crown of St. Stephen, dating from 1072 A.D., would appear to be the earliest known work of the sort that has survived. The Russians of the nineteenth century so perfected the process that plique À jour enamel is often called Russian enamel. Doubtless the forming of cups, caskets, and other precious objects of gems in unbacked mosaic suggested the style, and the jeweled cup of Chosroes to be seen in the BibliothÉque Nationale, Paris, may well be considered a forerunner of it.

Encrusted Enamel. This may be defined as enamel used to enrich raised and modeled gold-work where this vitreous color is neither entrenched, as in cloisonnÉ or in champlevÉ, nor painted, like Limoges work, on a flat field. The craftsmen of the Renaissance, both in Italy and in France, produced exquisite jewels of encrusted enamel, imitated by the Florentine jewelers of to-day who display their wares along the shops of the Ponte Vecchio. Painted enamels in this group may be sub-divided as follows:

(A) Those works which have vitreous colors added here and there to subdue, to correct, or to outline and decorate enamel surfaces, such as the pale yellows added to soften glaring whites, red to restore a color unsuccessful in the firing, outlines of plants and other forms and inscriptions. Used in combination with both cloisonnÉ and champlevÉ, and later to add further decorations to basse taille surfaces.

(B) Those works painted with successive firings of translucent or transparent colored enamels over a primary enamel ground that first has been fused to its metal field of gold, silver, or copper. Limoges enamels of this sort, whether in color or in grisaille (gray), as also are the much-neglected enamels known as Venetian enamels.

So much for the general broad divisions of enamels, though it must be borne in mind that there was often employed in the working out of a single object more than a single process. As color plays so important a part in the evolution of the history of enamels, the following table may prove useful to the collector as determining the more important colors of the enameler’s palette at different periods in the history of the art:

COLORS AND PERIODS

Nearly every writer upon enamels quotes the convenient commendation of the Greek sophist, Philostratus, who went to Rome in the reign of the Emperor Severus, about 200 A.D., to teach rhetoric. In the description of a boar hunt in his “Icones,” wherein he describes the trappings of the horses of the barbarians (Gauls or Britons), Philostratus writes: “For the barbarians of the region of the ocean [islanders?] are skilled, as it is said, in fusing colors upon heated brass [copper?] which become as hard as stone and render the ornament thus produced durable.” The Romans in Italy knew nothing of such things. Labarte and other authorities would have it that this passage refers to Gallo-Roman work, though such is rarely to be met with; while others claim for it reference to the work of British craftsmen, perhaps under design-influence of the Romans. Probably enameling was known to the Celts and to the Britons independent of Roman occupation. Certainly the Scoto-Celtic and the Britanno-Celtic tendency in design has little in common with that of the ancient civilized world of Greece, of Rome, or of Egypt. It is just possible the ingenious Celts invented champlevÉ.

With the rise of the Eastern Empire in the fourth century A.D., with its capital at Byzantium, came in that style of art known to us as the Byzantine, just as the North Italians produced the Lombardic style and western Europe the Gothic. Byzantine enamel was rigid and conventional in design but highly decorative and symbolical. At first the direct influence of Greek and Roman art affected their pictorial representations, as we see Christus in earlier work depicted as a clean-shaven, beautiful young man, an ideal that soon gave way to the sad representation of the Man of Sorrows. From the tenth century on, Byzantine ecclesiastical art was barren of invention. With the waning of the empire in 1057, the art of the Byzantine enamelers declined, and that of the Italians and the western Europeans blossomed forth untrammeled by stiff convention. Lombardic architecture and Gothic carving had helped to pave the way for the broader art of the Middle Ages, which no longer confined itself to cloisonnÉ but began to put forth champlevÉ enamels of great beauty likewise. Indeed, in Gothic times western craftsmen rarely made use of cloisonnÉ except for personal ornaments and jewelry. The famous “Lindauer Evangeliar,” one of the chief treasures collected by the late J. Pierpont Morgan, exhibits upon its covers superb examples of early enameling.

With the revival of classical learning which brought about the Renaissance, and the subsequent development of secular thought, art ceased to be what it had been throughout the Middle Ages—merely the handmaid of the church. No longer did the enamelers, Byzantine, Gothic, or Lombardic, work solely to adorn religious works; and ecclesiastical design broadened into secular application, a return of classical usages to a heritage of beauty and unrestraint from which, for some centuries, art had been kept by ecclesiasticism. By the twelfth century the art was well established to Cologne, TrÈves, Huy, Maestricht, and Verdun, thence traveling perhaps to Paris. Limoges and the Rhenish provinces of France became prolific in champlevÉ enamels by the end of the twelfth century. It is to 1189 A.D. that the earliest known enamels of Limoges are ascribed. There an enormous quantity of work, good, bad, and indifferent, was turned out during the thirteenth century, an art turning to a trade thereafter, and declining to neglect in the fourteenth, and then going out of fashion altogether.

However, toward the end of the fifteenth century the public in general had broken through Byzantine, Gothic, and Lombardic esthetic domination and breathed the clearer air of the Renaissance, becoming imbued with a desire for gentler, more beautiful things; and the old town of Limoges, ever awake to the commerce of demand, again started up her enameling ovens and went at the art with renewed vigor, retaining a supremacy that has handed down to us priceless treasures of the sort, exquisite and satisfying. This fine style may be said to date from 1530 to 1580 (being preceded by the early style 1475-1530), followed by a minute style, 1580-1630 preceding the decadence that dated from 1630 to the close of the manufactory in the eighteenth century.

Limoges enamels immediately bring to mind the names of such great artists in enamels as the PÉnicauds, Courtoys, Limousin, Raymond, Martin Didier and Jean Court, dit Vigier, and in the decline Jean Laudin.

The painted enamels of the early style are executed with much white painting over purplish-brown grounds, the figures bearing strong resemblance to the Flemish type. The coloring in these examples is very beautiful. The painted enamels of the fine style exhibit the great advance achieved by draftsmen under Italian influence. The glazes are finer and the finishing process a more careful one. At this period painting in grisaille became popular. By this term is meant monochrome painting in enamel the light being worked up over a dark

ground, stage by stage, in white, leaving the chiaroscuro to be determined by the effect of the ground showing through. Shading was often further emphasized by black lines or hatchings. The resulting gray tone gives the style its name. Later, relief from the monotony of gray was found by the addition of one or two tints, such as flesh tint, as may be seen in the work of Jean PÉnicaud, Pierre Raymond, and LÉonard Limousin. Perhaps Pierre Raymond distinguishes himself as exhibiting the finest color sense, though he may not have possessed LÉonard Limousin’s qualities of bold and direct handling. This latter artist, who worked from 1532 to 1574 and advertised himself in a little panel introduced into one of his works as “Enameller and Painter to the Chamber of the King,” was a consummate portraitist, and executed some splendid portraits in enamel. Any one who is acquainted with Italian faience will be struck by the relationships in effect between maiolica ware and Limoges enamels.

After Jean Limousin, descendant of the great LÉonard, and his school, enameling as a truly fine art began to die out at Limoges, in 1610. Colin, Martin, Poncet, Laudin, and the Noalhers carried on the work, but Jean Limousin stood shoulders above them all. Toutin introduced enamel-painting on gold in 1732 and the products became daintily and insipidly delicate, quite in the taste of Louis XIV and his successors, until at last enameling became little better than a rivaling imitation of china-painting.