. Enamels . ide, as wellhe might, to point out how comparatively fewexamples known in his day had been executedby any but the French artists of Limoges, thefocus whence emanated all these beautiful speci-mens of enamelled copper which are still so muchadmired and sought after for museums and col-lections, and whence skilled craftsmen were sentto execute their enamel work all over Europeduring the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and four-teenth centuries, though by far the larger quantity,if we may judge by specimens now left, was carriedout in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Butthough Lab
. Enamels . ide, as wellhe might, to point out how comparatively fewexamples known in his day had been executedby any but the French artists of Limoges, thefocus whence emanated all these beautiful speci-mens of enamelled copper which are still so muchadmired and sought after for museums and col-lections, and whence skilled craftsmen were sentto execute their enamel work all over Europeduring the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and four-teenth centuries, though by far the larger quantity,if we may judge by specimens now left, was carriedout in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Butthough Labarte attributed the greatest number ofthe specimens of champleve enamel of these twocenturies to Limoges and France alone, there wereother schools which produced a large amount ofsomewhat similar work, especially those of theprovinces of the Rhine and the Meuse, excellentexamples of these being kept in the BritishMuseum among those marked as enamels fromLorraine, and also at South Kensington in the PLATE XII. CROZIER. LIMOGES. ,KD ON CENTURY CHAMPLEVlfi ENAMELS 89 case labelled * Rhenish enamel, which containsthe wonderful Soltikoff reliquary which we referto again in this chapter. Although this cham-pleve work on copper is neither so delicate norso precious as the finer work on gold in cloisonneof earlier times, or the transparent work over bas-relief on gold and silver of a later time of Italyand France, these opaque enamels, more especi-ally some of the earlier ones, have an interestand beauty all their own. Doubtless owing totheir having been based on a less precious material,as well as the almost imperishable character ofthe work, they have come down to us throughthe centuries, many of them as perfect as whenthey left the enamellers workshop long ago. For there were times when, instead of beingvalued, this work—which possessed all the nobleseverity of decoration acquired under Byzantineor early mediaeval influences, its richness, devo-ti
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectenamela, bookyear1912
