What Is Enamel

When Caesar conquered Britain, he found that the Celts were already using enamels and many examples of this early craft are in museums all around the British Isles with some very good examples in the British Museum. There is a mirror in Gloucester museum found at Birdlip in Gloucestershire with red enamel. They had used the champlevé technique, where a recess in the metal, either produced by casting, chasing or engraving is filled with opaque red, blue, white and green enamel. The enamel is polished flush with the divisions formed by the edges of the cells. The later Saxon hanging bowls found in the Sutton Hoo boat burial are some of the finest early champlevé work.

In the 9th Century AD Cloisonné technique enamels moved back into the Middle East in Byzantine Constantinople and a century later into Russia. The Byzantine style continued until the 12th Century and usually comprised small thin pieces of gold, which were set into much larger objects. One of the finest is an 11th century plaque of St Paul, which is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Some two centuries later the Rhine, Meuse and Limoges areas were already producing some of their best work. The Limoges area also produced enamel work by the champlevé technique, continuing well into the 14th century AD.

A newer technique was developed in Italy in the 13th Century. Known as Basse-taille a translucent or transparent enamel is applied over a low relief, sunken or intaglio design, usually in gold or silver. The earliest known reference to this is in 1286 but the earliest known piece dates from 1290, a gold chalice made for the Convent of St Francis of Assisi.

The collections of the great cathedrals and churches account for the survival of these early works. A rare piece known as the King’s Lynn Cup or sometimes as the King John’s Cup is on display at King’s Lynn. It has been much restored over the years, but it originally dates to 1325 and is almost certainly the output of an English workshop. The...