The Ancient Art of Cloisonné and Its Modern Practitioners

Cloisonne, the technique of creating designs using thin metal wires soldered to a surface and filled with vitreous enamel, has been practised continuously since at least the twelfth century BCE when Mycenaean goldsmiths applied it to jewellery. Today, the technique survives in workshops from Beijing to Pforzheim, bridging ancient and modern through an unbroken chain of transmitted skill.

The process begins with shaping thin wire strips, usually gold, silver, or copper, into design outlines and soldering them to a metal base. These cloisons, or partitions, create cells holding the enamel. The wire work demands absolute precision: any gap between wire and base allows enamel to bleed between cells.

The vocabulary is worth fixing, since related techniques are routinely confused. Champleve cuts the cells out of a thick metal blank rather than building them up from wire; basse-taille lays translucent enamel over an engraved relief so the pattern reads through the glass; plique-a-jour omits the backing altogether, leaving cells that light passes through like a window. The same cell principle without enamel produced the Sutton Hoo shoulder clasps, where the cloisons hold cut garnets over gold foil.

Enamel is applied as wet paste of finely ground glass using a small spatula or quill. Each cell is filled individually, requiring steady hands and patience. The paste must be applied evenly without air bubbles, and multiple colours are applied in sequence with separate drying between each.

Firing transforms the paste into glass at approximately seven hundred fifty to eight hundred fifty degrees Celsius. Multiple firings are usually necessary as enamel shrinks during fusion and must be refilled. After the final firing, the surface is ground flat with carborundum stones and polished.

Enamel is glass and behaves like it. The frit is silica with a flux, coloured by metal oxides, cobalt for blue, copper for turquoise and green, tin oxide to make it opaque, and it has to be matched to the metal's rate of expansion or it crazes and lifts as it cools. That is why serious work carries counter-enamel on the reverse to balance the stress, and why turning a piece over tells you more about the maker than the front does.

Modern cloisonne artists have pushed the technique beyond traditional applications. Japanese artist Ando Jubei's translucent cloisonne achieves effects similar to stained glass, and contemporary jeweller Ilgiz Fazulzyanov's three-dimensional flowers demonstrate the technique's potential remains far from exhausted after three millennia.

Three bodies of work repay looking up. The Pala d'Oro behind the high altar of St Mark's in Venice carries Byzantine gold cloisonne panels from the tenth to twelfth centuries. Ming imperial pieces of the Jingtai reign gave Chinese cloisonne its everyday name, jingtailan. And in Meiji Japan, Namikawa Yasuyuki of Kyoto and Namikawa Sosuke of Tokyo, who were unrelated, were both appointed Imperial Household Artists in the 1890s, the latter for musen-shippo, in which the wires are lifted out before the final firing.

When collecting or commissioning cloisonne, examine wire work under magnification for precision and look for depth and clarity in enamel colours. Fine work should have perfectly flat, polished surface with no pitting or bubbling. The craft rewards close inspection. Discover practitioners at https://www.enamelsociety.org