Discovering the Professions

Discovering the Professions: Meeting an Enameler

L'ÉCOLE - Jewelry and Grand feu enamelling 19_C.jpg Full

Do you really know what enamel is? Behind this word hides a complex, ancestral know-how, already present in Greece in the 2nd millennium BC, which master glassmakers have continued to reinvent over the centuries.

Do you really know what enamel is? Behind this word hides a complex, ancestral know-how, already present in Greece in the 2nd millennium BC, which master glassmakers have continued to reinvent over the centuries.

Already very popular in France between the 12th and 17th centuries, enamel work was passed down within large families of enamellers who continued to innovate: champlevé enamel was very popular in the Middle Ages, particularly in Limoges, grisaille enamel representative of the achievements of Pierre Reymond (around 1513-1584) or plique-à-jour enamel, used by Charles Riffault, a Parisian enameler and jeweler who worked for Maison Boucheron in the 1870s-1880s. Enamel then accompanies the creative proliferation of Art Nouveau fueled by the diffusion of scientific knowledge at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Resulting from a clever alchemy of the fusion of metal and glass, this opaque or translucent vitrified material, colored or not, adorns watch and jewelry pieces as well as other small precious objects. A regular accomplice in the technical and ornamental research that punctuates the long history of jewelry, enamel intrigues, inspires...

How do you become an enameler? What are the specificities of this profession?

We invite you to come and talk with an enameller who will come and talk to you about her experience and tell you why she chose this profession and what it represents on a daily basis.

With Marie Oberlin, enameller and professor at L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.