Enamel Jewelry - History and How It's Made
JSquared is in LOVE with enamel. The art of enameling jewelry is mesmerizing and adds much loved color to jewelry since the colors of Turks and Caicos is what it’s all about. And we take full advantage of enamel in our Turqs in Turks, Conch-sciousness and Dawg Tag and Frank the Flamingo collections.
So we took to the Wikidpedia and broke it down for our customers!
So Where Did it All Begin?
It all began a long time ago with the ancient Egyptians, they applied enamels to stone objects, pottery, and sometimes jewelry. The ancient Greeks, Celts, Georgians, and Chinese also used enamel on metal objects.
You’ll also find enamel on decorative glass during the Roman period.
Ancient Persians used this method for coloring and ornamenting the surface of metals by fusing over it brilliant colors that are decorated in an intricate design.
In European art history, enamel was at its most important in the Middle Ages, beginning with the Late Romans and then the Byzantine, who began to use enamel in imitation of inlays of precious stones.
From either Byzantium or the Islamic world, the cloisonné technique reached China in the 13–14th centuries and remained very popular in China and is still produced today.
Starting from the mid-19th century, the Japanese also produced large quantities of very high technical quality.
More recently, the bright, jewel-like colors have made enamel a favoured choice for jewelry designers, including the famous eggs of Peter Carl Fabergé.
How is Enamel Made?
Enamel, is a material made by fusing powdered glass to something that can withstand a ton of heat by firing, usually between 750 and 850 °C (1,380 and 1,560 °F). The powder melts, flows, and then hardens to a smooth, durable vitreous coating. The word comes from the Latin vitreum, meaning "glassy".
Enamel can be used on metal, glass, ceramics, stone, or any material that will withstand the fusing temperature. In technical terms fired enamelware is an integrated layered composite of glass and another material (or more glass).
Enamel has many useful properties: it is smooth, hard, chemically resistant, durable, scratch resistant and has a long-lasting color fastness, is easy to clean, and cannot burn. Enamel is glass, not paint, so it doesn’t fade.
What are Other Uses of Enamel?
Interestingly enough the Buick automobile company was founded by David Dunbar Buick with wealth earned by his development of improved enameling processes for sheet steel and cast iron. This enameled ferrous material had, and still has, many applications: some modern advertising signs, interior oven walls, cooking pots, housing and interior walls of major kitchen appliances, housing and drums of clothes washers and dryers, sinks and cast iron bathtubs, farm storage silos, and processing equipment such as chemical reactors and pharmaceutical process tanks.
Video of the Enamel Jewelry-Making Process