The refined and delicate art of enameling encompasses many distinct aesthetic polarities and expressive possibilities. It is the art of precisely articulating finely powdered glass in layers—then firing and fusing it onto a metal base of copper, silver, gold, or steel—to create luminous and brilliant jewel-like colors that are both fragile in appearance, yet durable (in their permanence). While the technology of this vitreous “painting with fire” 1 evolved over time, its arcane methods were often shrouded in secrecy, carefully guarded within the artisans’ guilds and goldsmiths’ workshops. We need only to recall the grand panoply of antiquity’s treasures to recognize that artists of many cultures and eras have been drawn to enamel for its ability to produce objects of rare beauty and lasting value, as well as for its adaptability from miniature to mural scale.

Velvet da Vinci gallery’s The Enamel Show: Celebrating 500 Enameled Objects by Lark Books,2 exhibiting August 5 - September 6, 2009, in San Francisco illuminates the intriguing scope and variety of this medium’s long history and the surprisingly wide range of techniques it offers in many of today’s extravagant and whimsical creations.

The exhibition reflects upon the rich and often overlooked history of the medium itself, while presenting the refreshing innovations of sixty-five selected international contemporary artists. They have all embraced but challenged the preciousness of the past—forging new and unique directions through their collective willingness to both revive and experiment with the rigid restrictions of old methods; to fashion their materials and forms with irreverence and flexibility; and to infuse their content and subject matter with individuality, wit and even socio-political commentary. This has enormously broadened the possibilities of enamel-as-art.

Although she also makes ambitious large, multicolored plaques, Jessica Calderwood’s fine smaller brooches—Lip Service, Vision, Blue Curlers—are detailed, nearly monochromatic renditions with subtle color tints and disconcerting figural imagery. Jutta Klingebiel uses a similarly precise traditional Limoges technique in her tiny gold-backed pendant “talismans” or earrings—reminiscent of sixteenth-century Holbein portraits, but portraying an imagined contemporary couple or quirkily depicting a pair of sausages.

Michele Raney’s gorgeous die-struck Raven pendant is a two-inch masterpiece of multiple approaches and materials, combining carved details within the enameled bird’s indigo feathers and small granular gold berries as accents to the viridian green background.

Jessica Kahle’s Pinwheel Brooch is an adventurous and noteworthy melding of enamel with stacked, irregular flanges of mica—used here as an unexpected base material with an earthy translucence. Joan Parcher’s Phosphene Brooch-Hexagon is composed of steely gray-green triangular segments that are assembled like a floating puzzle with a sprinkling of silvery flakes that lend it iridescence. Stephanie Tomczak’s Angelito, a Mourning Portrait bears a sense of something faded and rescued from the past, like a once precious, but abandoned porcelain doll. The poignancy of symbolic angel’s faces carved on infants’ gravestones of the Colonial era is also evoked in her reinterpretation of such memento mori. Even the blackened silver back-plate of this pin is beautifully finished with perforated, stylized foliate designs.

Sean Scully says of his approach: “I search out controversial issues—subjects that fascinate me—and encode the frequently violent nature of those subjects through the use of juxtapositions, abstraction, and obtuse symbolism.” In his striking Navajo Yellowcake: Drum, Tower, Mineshaft, (a series of geometrical bolo-tie necklaces), he conveys a trenchant political message, mixing generic symbols for radioactivity, bomb tests and mining on Indian lands with traditional tribal symbols for the sun, crops and weather—all in vibrant elemental colors (scarlet, turquoise, golden yellow). Either with unwitting coincidence or deliberate intention, his use of enamel’s powdered pigments also harks back to the Navajo medicine men/shamans who created circumscribed healing diagrams with sprinkled minerals in their symbolic ‘sand’ paintings.

Giovanni Sicuro’s bracelet, Ege, is one of the pricier and more technically innovative pieces shown. Its inner curve is a thickly layered glossy aqua; while the outer segments are ‘sugar fired’ (slightly under heated, so that the powder does not entirely melt), and some areas are purposely left rough, then brushed with gold.
Brooches, bracelets and fanciful objects predominated in Velvet da Vinci’s exhibition. Although necklaces were numerous in the Lark book, they were not as well represented here. Even Shana Kroiz’s inventively designed White Wash or Beate Eismann’s Alas Blancas composed of bold riveted-together, irregular white ‘flags’ did not appear to be comfortably wearable. Rings do not seem to be favored frequently by the artists, due to some risk of damage from accidental bumps; but Jonathan Wahl’s Singing Lark with its silhouetted bird recessed in a finely rendered golden oval setting is an elegant example.

Enamel as a medium appears to be intractable and requires great technical control. Therefore it has not always been credited as a significant, expressive artform—especially in the United States where it was long considered to be merely a craft for hobbyists, or was only used as an industrial application.3 With the advent of post-World War II art schools and vastly improved training, many skillful and versatile artists have now emerged who have explored novel formats, creatively developing and mastering the potential of the materials. They have met the challenges of that medium and have established a true renaissance of enameled personal adornment.