About the Technique
Vitreous enamel, also porcelain enamel in US English, is a
material made by fusing powdered glass to a substrate by
firing, usually between 850 and 900 °C. The powder melts,
flows, and then hardens to a smooth, durablevitreous
coating on metal, or on glass or ceramics. The term
"enamel" is most often restricted to work on metal, which
is the subject of this article. Enameled glass is also
called "painted". Fired enamelware is an integrated layered
composite of glass and metal.
The word enamel comes from the Old High German word
smelzan (to smelt) via the Old French esmail. Used
as a noun, "an enamel" is a usually small decorative
object, coated with enamel coating. Enameling is an
old and widely-adopted technology, for most of its
history mainly used in jewelry and decorative art.
Since the 19th century the term applies also to
industrial materials and many metal consumer objects,
such as some cooking vessels, dishwashers,
laundry machines, sinks and tubs, etc.
Short History of Enameling
The ancient Egyptians applied enamels to pottery
and stone objects, and sometimes jewelry, though
the last less often than other ancient Middle Eastern
cultures. The ancient Greeks, Celts, Georgians, and
Chinese also used enamel on metal objects. Enamel
was also used to decorate glass vessels during the
Roman period, and there is evidence of this as early
as the late Republican and early Imperial periods in
the Levantine, Egypt, Britain and the Black Sea.
From more recent history, the bright, jewel-like
colors have made enamel a favored choice for designers
of jewelry and bibelots, such as the eggs of Peter
Carl Fabergé, enameled copper boxes of Battersea
enamellers, and artists such as George Stubbs and
other painters of portrait miniatures. Enameling was
a favorite technique of the Art Nouveau jewelers.
A resurgence in enamel-based art took place near
the end of the 20th Century in the Soviet Union
led by artists like Alexei Maximov and Leonid Efros.
In Australia, abstract artist Bernard Hesling brought
the style into prominence with his variously sized steel plates.
Enamel was first applied commercially to sheet
iron and steel in Austria and Germany in about 1850.
Industrialization increased as the purity of raw
materials increased and costs decreased.
The wet application process started with
the discovery of the use of clay to suspend
frit in water. Developments that followed during
the 20th Century include enameling-grade steel,
cleaned-only surface preparation, automation,
and ongoing improvements in efficiency, performance, and quality.