Vitreous enamel in the context of "Mosan art"

Bilston is a market town in the City of Wolverhampton in the West Midlands, England. It is in the Black Country, 2.5 miles (4 kilometres) south east of Wolverhampton city centre and close to the borders of Sandwell and Walsall. The town was known for enamelling from the mid-17th century, and is a former coal and iron mining district. Iron works dominated in Victorian times and the area became a centre for steel production. The town had a population of 34,639 at the 2021 Census.

In architecture and decorative art, ornament is decoration used to embellish parts of a building or object. Large figurative elements such as monumental sculpture and their equivalents in decorative art are excluded from the term; most ornaments do not include human figures, and if present they are small compared to the overall scale. Architectural ornament can be carved from stone, wood or precious metals, formed with plaster or clay, or painted or impressed onto a surface as applied ornament; in other applied arts the main material of the object, or a different one such as paint or vitreous enamel may be used.

A wide variety of decorative styles and motifs have been developed for architecture and the applied arts, including pottery, furniture, metalwork. In textiles, wallpaper and other objects where the decoration may be the main justification for its existence, the terms pattern or design are more likely to be used. The vast range of motifs used in ornament draw from geometrical shapes and patterns, plants, and human and animal figures. Across Eurasia and the Mediterranean world there has been a rich and linked tradition of plant-based ornament for over three thousand years; traditional ornament from other parts of the world typically relies more on geometrical and animal motifs. The inspiration for the patterns usually lies in the nature that surrounds the people in the region. Many nomadic tribes in Central Asia had many animalistic motifs before the penetration of Islam in the region.

Limoges enamel has been produced at Limoges, in south-western France, over several centuries up to the present. There are two periods when it was of European importance. From the 12th century to 1370 there was a large industry producing metal objects decorated in enamel using the champlevé technique, of which most of the survivals (estimated at around 7,500 pieces), and probably most of the original production, are religious objects such as reliquaries.

After a gap of a century, the industry revived in the late 15th century, now specializing in the technique of painted enamel, and within a few decades making rather more secular than religious pieces. In the French Renaissance it was the leading centre, with several dynastic workshops, who often signed or punchmarked their work. Luxury pieces such as plates, plaques and ewers were painted with sophisticated Mannerist decoration of pictorial figure scenes, which on vessels were surrounded by elaborate borders.

A brooch (/ˈbroʊtʃ/, also US: /ˈbruːtʃ/) is a decorative jewellery item designed to be attached to garments, often to fasten them together. It is usually made of metal, often silver or gold or some other material. Brooches are frequently decorated with enamel or with gemstones and may be solely for ornament or serve a practical function as a clothes fastener. The earliest known brooches are from the Bronze Age. As fashions in brooches changed rather quickly, they are important chronological indicators. In archaeology, ancient European brooches are usually referred to by the Latin term fibula. One example is the Tara Brooch.

In art history, the French term objet d'art (/ˌɒbʒeɪ ˈdɑːr/ ; French pronunciation: [ɔbʒɛ daʁ]) describes an ornamental work of art, and the term objets d’art describes a range of works of art, usually small and three-dimensional, made of high-quality materials, and a finely-rendered finish that emphasises the aesthetics of the artefact. Artists create and produce objets d’art in the fields of the decorative arts and metalwork, porcelain and vitreous enamel; figurines, plaquettes, and engraved gems; ivory carvings and semi-precious hardstone carvings; tapestries, antiques, and antiquities; and books with fine bookbinding.

The National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, describes their accumulated artworks as a: "collection of objets d’art [which] comprises over 800 objects. These are mostly small, decorative art items that fall outside the scope of the Museum’s ceramic, plate, textiles and glass collections." The artwork collection also includes metal curtain ties, a lacquered papier-maché tray, tobacco boxes, cigarette cases, découpage (cut-paper items), portrait miniatures, a gilt-brass clock finial, plaques, statuettes, plaquettes, a horse brass, a metal pipe tamper, a small glass painting, et cetera.

Enamelled glass or painted glass is glass which has been decorated with vitreous enamel (powdered glass, usually mixed with a binder) and then fired to fuse the glasses. It can produce brilliant and long-lasting colours, and be translucent or opaque. Unlike most methods of decorating glass, it allows painting using several colours, and along with glass engraving, has historically been the main technique used to create the full range of image types on glass.

All proper uses of the term "enamel" refer to glass made into some flexible form, put into place on an object in another material, and then melted by heat to fuse them with the object. It is called vitreous enamel or just "enamel" when used on metal surfaces, and "enamelled" overglaze decoration when on pottery, especially on porcelain. Here the supporting surface is glass. All three versions of the technique have been used to make brush-painted images, which on glass and pottery are the normal use of the technique.

A portrait miniature is a miniature portrait painting from Renaissance art, usually executed in gouache, watercolor, or enamel. Portrait miniatures developed out of the techniques of the miniatures in illuminated manuscripts, and were popular among 16th-century elites, mainly in England and France, and spread across the rest of Europe from the middle of the 18th century, remaining highly popular until the development of daguerreotypes and photography in the mid-19th century. They were usually intimate gifts given within the family, or by hopeful males in courtship, but some rulers, such as James I of England, gave large numbers as diplomatic or political gifts. They were especially likely to be painted when a family member was going to be absent for significant periods, whether a husband or son going to war or emigrating, or a daughter getting married.

The first miniaturists used watercolour to paint on stretched vellum, or (especially in England) on playing cards trimmed to the shape required. The technique was often called limning (as in Nicolas Hilliard's treatise on the Art of Limming of c. 1600), or painting in little. During the second half of the 17th century, vitreous enamel painted on copper became increasingly popular, especially in France. In the 18th century, miniatures were painted with watercolour on ivory, which had now become relatively cheap. As small in size as 40 mm × 30 mm, portrait miniatures were often fitted into lockets, inside watch-covers or pieces of jewellery so that they could be carried on the person. Others were framed with stands or hung on a wall, or fitted into snuff box covers.

Ronde-bosse, en ronde bosse or encrusted enamel is an enamelling technique developed in France in the late 14th century that produces small three-dimensional figures, or reliefs, largely or entirely covered in enamel. The new method involved the partial concealment of the underlying gold, or sometimes silver, from which the figure was formed. It differs from older techniques which all produced only enamel on a flat or curved surface, and mostly, like champlevé, normally used non-precious metals, such as copper, which were gilded to look like gold. In the technique of enamel en ronde-bosse small figures are created in gold or silver and their surfaces lightly roughened to provide a key for the enamel, which is applied as a paste and fired. In places the framework may only be wire.

The term derives from the French term émail en ronde bosse ("enamel in the round"); however in French en ronde bosse merely means "in the round" and is used of any sculpture; in English ronde bosse or en ronde bosse, though usually treated as foreign terms and italicised, are specifically used of the enamel technique, and in recent decades have largely replaced the older English term "encrusted enamel".

Champlevé is an enamelling technique in the decorative arts, or an object made by that process, in which troughs or cells are carved, etched, die struck, or cast into the surface of a metal object, and filled with vitreous enamel. The piece is then fired until the enamel fuses, and when cooled, the surface of the object is polished. The uncarved portions of the original surface remain visible as a frame for the enamel designs; typically, they are gilded in medieval work. The name comes from the French for "raised field", "field" meaning background, though the technique in practice lowers the area to be enamelled rather than raising the rest of the surface.

The technique has been used since ancient times, though it is no longer among the most commonly used enamelling techniques. Champlevé is suited to the covering of relatively large areas, and figurative images, although it was first prominently used in Celtic art for geometric designs. In Romanesque art, its potential was fully used, decorating caskets, plaques, and vessels, in Limoges enamel and that from other centres.