Enamel
Every year an exhibition of pieces selected from the Goldsmiths’ Company Collection is put on to accompany Goldsmiths’ Fair. With all our exhibitions, publications, acquisitions and projects, the aim is the same: to celebrate and document excellence; support contemporary craftspeople; and inspire the next generations of makers and patrons. The Fair has since 1983 been one of the most significant platforms the Company provides for the designer-maker community, giving hundreds of jewellers and silversmiths working at the highest level of the craft the opportunity to show their talents and sell directly to the public. It has launched careers and has allowed makers to communicate their expertise in melding traditional hand skills in precious metal with the latest digital technologies. It is also a lively social and networking event which conveys the excitement of creativity, skill and imagination. Through our exhibitions, the Fair also offers a special opportunity to share more widely the Goldsmiths’ Company’s own outstanding collections.
Our Fair exhibition in the Front Hall each year highlights the skills of British designer makers. We choose a different theme each time, taking a new slice through the Collection, sharing wonderful pieces which prompt new research questions. This year’s show on the art of enamel focuses on a range of enamels, some of them very rarely exhibited, which were made between 1961 and the present. There is extraordinary diversity of enamelling on view, in terms of makers, style, design and techniques. We have intermingled jewels with gold and silver plate, and even an art medal, in a display that is aesthetic rather than chronological in its focus. Each piece has been chosen to be characteristic of its maker. Images of makers, techniques and some of the works on display are shown in greater detail on an accompanying screen.
Enamelling is a highly skilled technique. It fuses finely ground glass onto a metal surface at temperatures of around 800°C, so as to create a decorative surface. Enamels can be brilliantly coloured, glossy and polished, like Kyosun Jung’s `Sunrise’ and `Sunset’ beakers of 2018; or they can be subtly monochrome, like Grace Girvan’s `St Ninian’s Isle’ brooch from 2012, with its strong evocation of the North Sea and its tideline through lightly textured blue-grey enamel set against grey schist pebbles. The grey and white enamels of Tamar De Vries Winter’s `Pair of Travel Cups dedicated to the Unknown Refugee’ tell a story of separation, dislocation and the meaning of home. The olive trees of East Jerusalem, where Tamara was born, are contrasted with the apple and oak trees of Cambridge where she now lives, rendered in her signature technique of printed enamel transfer. Different again is Elizabeth-Jane Campbell’s `Conflicted’ brooch of 2018, in which she has abraded the surface of her orange enamel almost down to the substrate to produce a very contemporary texture. Another recent take on enamel is seen in Jonathan Boyd’s group of updated floral brooches in enamelled silver from 2017, commissioned by the journalist, broadcaster and narrator, Corinne Julius, for her exhibition Bloomin’ Jewels. Boyd is an artist, jeweller and teacher specialising in conceptual work. The three brooches are inspired by Glasgow city detritus—discarded carpet, traffic cones and metal street posts. He used digital models of real-life objects, 3D-scanned using photogrammetry on his mobile phone.
These and other marvellous examples in the exhibition show that contemporary studio enamelling has a special appeal, but the techniques of enamelling have been an important element of the goldsmiths’ art over many centuries. From the medieval period onwards, enamelling in Europe was perhaps practised most famously in France, helping to explain why the techniques used to make it still have French names. We can show fine examples of each principal technique.
Cloisonné enamel is demonstrated to perfection in the work of Maureen Edgar, especially in her Court Wine Cup for Professor Richard Himsworth, one in a unique series of cups commissioned or made by members of the Court of Assistants, the governing board of the Goldsmiths’ Company. The gold immunoglobulin and thyroxine molecules realised in cloisonné enamel refer to Professor Himsworth’s medical research. Fred Rich uses cloisonné and basse taille enamel to present aspects of the natural world, based on meticulous studies in watercolour. On his `Leaping Salmon’ beaker from 2009, burnished wires in 22 carat gold define the body of the leaping fish to make recesses (cloisons) for the translucent enamels. The fish are seen against a carved matt ground set with strips of burnished silver wire. Fred says of his work: ‘The attraction to colour and bright sparkly things has been with me from my earliest memories and the wonder and delight in the world around me seems to get more intense as I get older’. His `Dark Crimson Underwing Moth’ pin from 2021 is based on meticulous watercolour studies from life and is made with gold wire only 0.05 mm thick, in what Rich calls `micro-cloisonne’.
Plique-à-jour defines translucent enamel that has no backing but is set into metal outlines so as to `let in the daylight’, the literal meaning of the French term. The effect resembles a stained-glass window. A bowl commissioned by the Company from Alexandra Raphael presents celestial imagery with phases of the moon at the rim and signs of the Zodiac. The dancing leopard with stars in place of spots refers to the leopard’s head on the Goldsmiths’ Company arms and to the mark of the Company Assay Office. Raphael comments: `Plique-à-jour bowls! Blood, sweat and tears. Obsession with a degree of masochism is essential. Not for the faint of heart…it’s one of the most challenging artforms.’
Champlevé enamel is fused into sections which have been recessed in the surface of the metal by carving, chasing or stamping, as seen to stunning effect in Phil Barnes’s `Abstract Design No.1’. The vase has been spun in sterling silver, then champlevé-enamelled in shades of blue, orange and green in an abstract design. The enamel is translucent to reveal the engraved line patterns underneath, while the white silver areas have been left highly polished to set off the design, the enamels and the curves of the form.
Basse-taille is a further development of champlevé in that the metal base is carved, chased or engraved with a pattern of varying depth seen through layers of translucent enamel. Variations in the depth of the engraving alters the depth of colour of the enamels to striking effect. Artist enamellers such as Gerald Benney and Jane Short often combine the two techniques. Gerald Benney’s work from the 1970s presented an explosion of colour as he learnt to make peerless enamels in his Beenham workshop, following intensive tuition from the Norwegian specialist, Berger Bergerson. As Benney recorded: `For two years we just had crates full of rubbish. The least speck of dust, or a tiny air bubble, can ruin enamel.’ We show a range of Benney enamels in basse-taille, from his Egyptian-style boxes in the form of human eyes to his imposing `Thistle’ vase decorated with a rich red enamel, the hardest colour to fire successfully. His Court Wine Cup, made for use as his personal beaker when dining in Goldsmiths’ Hall, is his masterpiece of basse-taille and one of the most accomplished pieces he ever produced. It is engraved with the crest of the Company, the demi-maiden holding a touchstone and the scales of the Assay Office, with heraldic mantling scrolling out to swirl all over the surface. Benney cut very deep grooves for enamel, with a wall on one side and a slope on the other, so that the enamel flows and settles in varying depths – and hence colours – to define the design. It is no wonder that former Goldsmiths’ Company Curator Graham Hughes described this beaker as `the best tribute to Gerald Benney’s decades of doing and wishing at Goldsmiths’ Hall’.
Jane Short’s champlevé and basse-taille vase evokes a jay’s wing, in which the jay’s feathers are carved into the silver and viewed through layers of fired translucent enamel, with the subtlest gradations of colour and texture. A Goldsmiths’ Company commission from 1990, this was one of her earliest pieces on a large scale. The Company left her free to choose the subject for this important commission, to support her in developing her skill. She writes: `That was the starting point of my love for the technique; subtle but resonant enamel colours mixed like painterly watercolour over a rough-cut silver surface of varying depths… I was happily caught up in my own dialogue with the enamel’. Looking at a piece like this begs the question: how long did it take to make? Jane’s notebook shows that she worked for 219 1/2 hours on engraving, grinding and preparing pigments, and successive enamel firings.
Another milestone in Jane Short’s career as an art enameller also represents one of the most significant Goldsmiths’ Company commissions in recent memory: the Coronation Cup of His Majesty King Charles III. The Cup is both a formal ceremonial piece, made for the King’s first entry into the City of London as sovereign on 18 October 2023, and a personal tribute to His Majesty’s well-known concerns for the future of the planet, climate change and sustainable agriculture. It was made to a short deadline. There was not time for an open design competition, so the Company drew up a detailed brief, set up a commissioning panel and invited a number of makers to submit initial proposals. More detailed designs were then considered from a shortlist of makers, before the winners were chosen: Clive Burr and Jane Short, who have for many years worked in artistic partnership. They designed and masterminded the Cup, working in collaboration with nine specialists: Linda Straupenieks, Junko Adachi, Kyosun Jung, Stefan Coe, Samantha Marsden, Angus McFadyen, Reg Elliott, Fiona Rae and Graham Hamilton. Throughout, the design references His Majesty’s passion for the natural world. The cover is inspired by His Majesty’s gardens at Highgrove. The clipped yew hedge of the Sundial Garden forms the rim, while delphiniums in blossom are engraved by Angus McFadyen within the four panels. Around the base, Jane Short has engraved the national flowers of the four nations of the United Kingdom—the rose, daffodil, shamrock and thistle—with four insect pollinators nestled among the flowers. Other aspects of the design, such as the Gothic windows on the stem and the rose window set into the separate base, refer to Westminster Abbey as the theatre of coronations since 1066.
It is the enamelling of the Cup, above all, which draws the eye. The knop is exquisitely enamelled and engraved by Jane Short with an artistic representation of Earth as seen through swirling cloud cover from space. The blue enamel continues onto the stem of the Cup, depicting the sky viewed through windows of Gothic tracery in silver-gilt. It exemplifies Jane Short’s credo: `Colour, in the medium of enamel, has been the driving force of my making career…it is a very evocative medium.’ A second display for the Fair shows an outstanding group of gifts made to the Collection in 2023-24 by makers and collectors. A third presents a selection of recent acquisitions, including pieces bought from the 2023 Goldsmiths’ Fair, which we hope will both support and inspire Fair exhibitors, and stimulate new buyers to make their own purchases.
Dr Dora Thornton
Banner: `Jay Wing’ vase, 1990, Jane Short