. Enamels . he dignity and beauty of the whole, andwhen, as so often happens, the colours are neces-sarily opaque, there is a subtle and refined beautyof colour, which added to the wisely proportioneduse of metal needful to the perfect constructionof the complete work, is really as effective andoften more so than the sparkling brilliancy oftransparent enamels. We dwellers in the British Isles, and especiallyperhaps the inhabitants of Ireland, may lay claimwith well-founded reason that our country was animportant centre for work in both gold and enamelin its early days of Christianity, and a gr
. Enamels . he dignity and beauty of the whole, andwhen, as so often happens, the colours are neces-sarily opaque, there is a subtle and refined beautyof colour, which added to the wisely proportioneduse of metal needful to the perfect constructionof the complete work, is really as effective andoften more so than the sparkling brilliancy oftransparent enamels. We dwellers in the British Isles, and especiallyperhaps the inhabitants of Ireland, may lay claimwith well-founded reason that our country was animportant centre for work in both gold and enamelin its early days of Christianity, and a great deal ofthis work remains in both countries even now, afterrunning the risk of the melting-pot of so manygenerations. But I think we should all be patrioticenough to be pleased if some learned and ingeni-ous person would rediscover suitable Englishnames for the various processes used in the art ofenamelling, not that it matters so much, in thatall arts and crafts too may be called cosmopolitan; PLATE VIII. VKNETIAN IfOWI., OF COlIKK COVERED WITH BLUE, GKEENAND WHITE SIXTEENTH CENTIKY CLOISONNlfi ENAMELS 47 yet when we find so many beautiful objects whichby their character and surroundings tell us theywere made in these Isies, I think we should all bethe more pleased with ourselves if we could usewords of our own tongue in describing them. It is quite possible that, especially in Ireland,there may yet be unearthed in the early languagesof these Isles, documents which describe andgive names to the various processes in the artsthen used. Be that as it may, there is little liter-ature of this description known at present, and wemust be content and not ungrateful to use theFrench words which Labarte says were adoptedby the antiquaries in describing the processes ofLimoges — cloisonne, champleve, basse-taille, ^plique a jour, and others, remembering thatthese words, now in universal use, really origin-ated long after the actual processes themselves,and have some
Size: 1369px × 1825px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectenamela, bookyear1912
