File:Enamels (1912) (14586802738).jpg

Identifier: enamelsocad00dawsuoft (find matches)
Title: Enamels
Year: 1912 (1910s)
Authors: Dawson, Nelson, Mrs
Subjects: Enamel and enameling
Publisher: London : Methuen & Co. Ltd.
Contributing Library: Dorothy H. Hoover Library, Ontario College of Art & Design
Digitizing Sponsor: The Ontario College of Art & Design

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knows by experience the hours andhours it takes to prepare even a small piece ofcloisonne and enamel it. Certainly some of the finer work is costly, andjustly so. It was the making of the better kindof enam.el that was described by Mr. RudyardKipling in his entertaining description in From Seato Sea. It was at Kioto when visiting one of thelittle enamelling workshops there, and the rest ofMr. Kiplings account is instructive. In thenext room sat the manufactory, three men, fivewomen, and two boys, all as silent as sleep. It isone thing to read of cloisonne making, but quiteanother to watch it being made. I began tounderstand the cost of the ware when I saw aman working out a pattern of sprigs and butter-flies on a plate about ten inches in diameter.With finest silver ribbon wire set on edge, lessthan the sixteenth of an inch high, he followedthe curves of the drawing at his side, pinchingthe wire into tendrils and the serrated outlines ofleaves with infinite patience. A rough touch on
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ORIENTAL ENAMELS 167 the raw copper plate would have sent the patternflying into a thousand disconnected threads. . . .Followed the colouring, which was done by littleboys in spectacles; with a pair of tiniest steelchopsticks, they filled from bowls at their sideseach compartment of the pattern with its properhue of paste. There is not much room allowedfor error in filling the spots on a butterflys wingwith avanturine enamel, when the said wings areless than an inch across. . . . After the enamelhas been filled in, the pot or plate goes to befired, and the enamel bubbles all over theboundary-lines of wires, and the whole comesfrom the furnace, looking like delicate majolica.There are not many Japanese enamels atSouth Kensington. Some fine cast-iron sakekettles have cloisonne lids and are antique,whilst one other remarkably similar, and lookingjust as old, is alleged nineteenth-century work.Some beads are of fine cloisonne on copper, alsosome fine plates, notably one with white lizards

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