CHAPTER XXI

STRAW MARQUETERIE

From that moment my curiosity was aroused, for experience has taught me that the most interesting places are those which most people find uninteresting.

One of the things I found in this little town will, perhaps, dear reader, interest you, and so I will make mention of it as introduction to my subject. The room to which I was assigned by my host of the inn was, I have reason to believe, the chambre de luxe of the country-side. The high beamed ceiling was painted much after the manner of the great ceiling of the Florentine church of San Miniato al Monte, although I saw nothing of it all by the flickering candle which lighted my arrival at this medieval hostelry. In the morning a burst of golden sunlight awakened me, and in through the windows was wafted the fragrance of the grape flowers in blossom outside. My sleepy eyes followed the walls around. And then opened wide on beholding a quaintly framed canvas of beautiful freshness, the picture of a group of saints.

Jumping out of bed and going over to inspect the painting, I observed on an old marqueterie secrétaire which stood just below it an array of curious, golden-hued objects. On closer examination I found some to be boxes, some jewel-caskets, others yarn-containers, while needle-cases, frames, book-covers and the like completed this odd assemblage of curious antiques. Then I discovered that they were all examples of straw marqueterie, but finer, of them, than any pieces of the sort that ever before had happened to come to my attention.

I suppose being a collector makes one a discoverer. At any rate, a discovery it was, and I asked myself how on earth these things happened to be here. That morning my host explained.

“All these,” said he, “I have been collecting as a hobby for years—things made by prisoners of war, interesting and worth preserving. The inlaid straw objects are but part of what I have—ivories, carved cocoanuts; jewelry, paper models, embroideries, and so on, all made by prisoners of war, mostly in Italy, I presume, as I have picked them up here in my own country in traveling around. I would not part with them for the world!”

This declaration dashed my hopes to the ground, but one can forgive much in a landlord who collects things more spiritual than rent, and a landlord in Italy who “travels around” also commands one’s respect for his ability to be so independent. That is why I listened instead of bargaining, and in that morning I learned many interesting facts about my host’s unusual collection. Perhaps there were few kindred collecting souls in the neighborhood who deigned to listen as sympathetically as I did or who made no effect to conceal an enthusiasm which these things awakened within me. At any rate, the amiable innkeeper who would not part with his treasures for the world proved finally willing to sell a few of them for considerably less than a hemisphere, which gave me a chance to weave tales of my own in the years that were to follow.

Dr. John Eliot Hodgkin, F.S.A., a renowned English antiquarian, had a collection of some eighty pieces of straw marqueterie, a collection exceeded in extent at that time by two French collection only. Probably not over a hundred pieces of straw marqueterie are to be found in all the British museums combined. Dr. Hodgkin’s interesting volumes under the title of “Rariora” are, unfortunately, out of print. In one of these he reproduced some of the specimens of straw marqueterie in his own extensive collection, and the reader who wishes further to interest himself in the subject is referred to the pages of those erudite tomes, which he may be fortunate enough to find on the shelves of some of the more important art libraries in America.

In Europe the earlier centuries brought into existence many small arts of which we have well nigh forgotten the very existence. It was thus these straw marqueterie objects of the sixteenth century, the seventeenth and the eighteenth, objects whose form of decoration is so rare as to be almost unknown to dealers in antiques and curios. Indeed, I have failed to find a single specimen of early straw marqueterie in any shop in America, or to discover any dealer who really knew anything about it.

This decoration, composed of filaments of colored wheaten or oaten straw applied to small cabinets, pictorial panels, mirror frames, caskets, bookbindings, étuis, bonbonnières, plaques, etc., boasts of an early origin. Possibly it was known in the fifteenth century, but I have not found any examples that can with reasonable precision be attributed to a period earlier than the first quarter of the sixteenth century. In certain instances the straw filaments composing the mosaics or marqueterie covering of the objects was highly colored originally, but time has softened and toned them down. The finest specimens of this work resemble chiseled gold, and nearly all examples of straw marqueterie show a play of light on the grain of the fabric that produces the most exquisite effects imaginable, which one must see really to appreciate.

Very crude modern Japanese trays, boxes, etc., are technically akin to this old marqueterie, but are not worthy to be classed with it or placed near these rare old European specimens. Indeed, the Oriental artist-craftsmen have never appeared to grasp a full realization of the resources of straw as a material for producing the exquisite effects to which the earlier European workers attained, except in a few instances. This seems strange, considering the ingenuity of Oriental craftsman. The European artist-craftsman appears to have developed the art independently of Oriental suggestion, or at least independently of Oriental influence.

In all probability straw marqueterie started in a humble way with the peasantry. The materials for working it out lay at hand without cost, infinite patience being all that was required, with skill and inherent taste and a sense of design, which peasant art invariably exhibits. Probably the early Italians were the first makers of objects in straw marqueterie and the French were probably the next ones to take it up, borrowing the art from the Italians.

As no straw-work of this sort is being made in Europe to-day, one can but venture to guess at the details of the process. Such old volumes as Barrow’s “Dictionarium Polygraphicum,” and the “Handmaid of the Arts,” in which one might reasonably look for some hint on the subject, are strangely neglectful of the matter, which leads to the conclusion that though straw marqueterie was at one time one of the flourishing small arts on the Continent, it was less generally known in England. In fact, nearly all the English work of the sort dates from the eighteenth century.

In the Victoria and Albert Museum is an ingeniously constructed work-box of pine, decorated on the outside and the inside with colored straw-work arranged in panels containing checkers, diagonal lines, and other devices. The front is fitted with a revolving shutter, behind which is a panel ornamented in the center with buildings and fitted below with a small drawer. Below the shutter is a larger drawer, divided into four lidded compartments, two of the lids being of glass; under this drawer is another small drawer. At the top of the box is a lid fitted inside with a mirror and covering two compartments with hinged lids. The word “HOPE” appears on both the front and the back of the box. There are four turned bone handles and a lozenge-shaped lock-plate of the same material.

In the author’s collection is a cabinet of straw marqueterie, measuring 8½ inches in height, 9 inches in breadth, and 4¾ inches in depth. There is one wide, deep drawer at the bottom, above which six narrower, shallower drawers are placed in two sections of three each. From the shape of the handles, the proportion of the cabinet, the quality of the black lacquer inside finish of the drawers, and the design of the panel across the bottom, one is led to conclude that this is an uncommon example of Japanese workmanship.

A number of small boxes with figure subjects, all carefully and wonderfully worked out in filaments of colored straw, are extant to attest to the durability of straw marqueterie, which is not nearly so fragile as its name suggests it to be. Some of these were executed by French prisoners of war as Norman Cross in 1810.

From times immemorial, I suppose, war prisoners who have not been enslaved by their captors but have been treated without barbarity have sought to enlighten their tedium by various sorts of handicraft, exerting to the utmost their ingenuity in the matter of tools and materials. To-day the subject is one of immediate interest to us. Already have art objects made by prisoners of war interned in Holland and in Switzerland reached us. In time they will come to be as treasured as the antiques made by the prisoners of war of the Napoleonic period and of earlier times. To catalogue the variety of such things would require page after page. Naturally, nearly all such objects are “handy” in size and one does not look for particularly large specimens of war prisoners’ art work. One begins to realize, after visiting the convalescents’ ward of a military hospital, what a blessing to the soldier some knowledge of an art handicraft may be. I have seen several marvelous things whittled out of wood by prisoners of war—bone carvings, beadwork, jewelry—that indicate the godsend the work must be to the soldier prisoner detained in the enemy’s camp. But of all these objects I know of none that are more beautiful than those of straw marqueterie.

I do not know where the art originated. Mr. Hodgkin confessed to a like hiatus in his knowledge of the subject. However, I have no doubt that artistic straw inlaying was practised in the Orient at a very early date. Thence it may have been brought into Europe. I feel sure that it was known and practised during the period of the Renaissance in Italy, and I consider the old Italian examples of this craft to be the earliest European ones.

This early Italian straw marqueterie is distinguished by its golden hues, suggesting the richness of Venetian paintings. The objects to be covered by the artist in straw were of various materials, such as wood, paper, papier-maché, cloth, and occasionally glass, metal, or bone. The design, pattern, or picture was worked out by pasting filaments and little sections of straw (stained to various colors) on the surfaces of the objects to be covered, which were then varnished. The minuteness of some of this straw-work is extraordinary. It would seem to have necessitated the use of a glass of high magnifying power as well as to have required almost super-human patience and ingenuity to put it together. Moreover, these early pieces in straw marqueterie were so faithfully fabricated that they have come down to us in excellent condition.

I imagine the French learned the art of straw marqueterie from their Italian cousins. I feel sure that the Spanish craftsmen did. At any rate, French prisoners of war have shown themselves wonderfully proficient in this art in the past. The French prisoners of the Napoleonic Wars who were quartered in England were prolific in their output of this sort. Numerous tea-caddies have I seen from their hands, here and there preserved in the cottages of the country round about Peterborough. At near-by Norman Cross was one of the chief camps of the Napoleonic prisoners of war. We are told that a regular market for the art wares made by French prisoners at Norman Cross was held daily in the camp. Perth was another prisoner-of-war concentration center and contemporary writers tell us that the objects made by the French prisoners there were of a finer design and quality than like things produced by the English townsmen, in consequence of which there was brisk market rivalry. At Dartmoor, Stapleton, Liverpool, and Greenland Valleyfield the French war prisoners exhibited their skill. At the Liverpool prison they constructed little straw marqueterie cases to contain miniature ships and like articles.

What stories the objects of straw marqueterie made by prisoners of war could tell could they but speak! What silent testimonies of grit, patience, and fortitude! But perhaps we may be glad that we do not know all they might tell, for to-day has sorrow enough and we should be grateful that time has been kind enough to leave us just the beauty and not the life details of these objects from the hands of those who suffered in the yesterdays of other wars.

CHAPTER XXII

CONSOLES

The use of the term console in this connection has been a matter of some dispute. It is reasonable to suppose that it was borrowed, because of the bracket supports—as distinguished from tables with four legs—from the French architectural term console, a bracket support. Since the idea came from the French, we must expect to find some of the earliest and most beautiful consoles in French period furniture. Some of the most notable ones are to be found in the great museums of America. Fortunate it is that these are available for public study; for many modern furniture-makers have been able to reproduce with fidelity the designs of these wonderful consoles. Collectors, of course, do not primarily seek reproductions, but many of the foremost among them realize that where originals are not obtainable, unusually fine reproductions are to be welcomed. The desirability lies not only in age but in intrinsic beauty. I for one believe that much pleasure can be had from the possession of fine reproductions of certain things, consoles among them.

Genuine antiques are the things we naturally strive for first of all, and consoles present a field that is, as yet, by no means prohibitive, even for the moderately filled purse. To be sure, the rare French consoles of the early Louis periods are not to be had at every turn (the war has rendered them still rarer), but there are English consoles and console tables and others by early American furniture-makers that are surely worth hunting out. Their appropriateness to the scheme of the small house commends their preservation and insures a revival of interest in their modern use.

Virtually all of the eighteenth-century furniture-makers constructed console tables. Gilded furniture in all its gorgeousness found favor in England shortly before 1720, and the consoles and console tables were unusually well adapted to finish and decoration of the sort that suggested the magnificence of Louis XIV and, later on, the elegance and richness of Louis XV. During the Empire period some were elaborately decorated in white and gold. With the advent of the Napoleonic era, the console and the console table still held sway. Indeed, I do not think they have ever lost favor, and the last few years have seen a remarkable increase of interest in both furniture forms on the part of decorators and collectors of fine old furniture. Moreover, the console has not only interested but influenced many of our present-day architects.

The console and the console table are by no means confined to the furniture-makers of France, Great Britain, and America. We find both forms in early eighteenth-century Italian furniture, and in Spain, Austria, Germany, and Russia one also comes across types of consoles that, dependent as they nearly always are on French models, still exhibit occasional variations in design that link them to the art traditions of the land of their manufacture.

Formal apartments and the smaller reception rooms of the eighteenth-century houses of more or less pretension came to feel the need of what one furniture-lover aptly called “a table that was not a table.” In fact, Sheraton insisted that “portables,” as he called consoles, were indispensable in the drawing-room. Marble shelves the width of small—and sometimes, indeed, of very large—tables were supported by brackets along the wall, bringing the shelf to the height of a table top. In earlier examples the bold florid and exaggerated types in soft wood, carved and gilded, often carried decoration to extremes. The consoles found place beneath great mirrors and, occasionally, beneath large paintings, tapestries, and the like.

In early consoles there was great variety in their supporting brackets, the motifs of ornament being taken from flowers, foliage, parts of the human form, animal and bird forms, rococo vagaries, and so on. During the Empire the eagle came to be popularly employed as a console support by the French furniture-designers of the time. In the collection of the Duke of Beaufort are a number of the finest examples of the eagle consoles. There are also some fine examples in the state dining-room of the White House. Before long the earliest forms of console supports gave way to more extensive supports and finally these reached the floor, as in those consoles which have the cabriole form of support.

Sideboards were unknown during the first part of the eighteenth century, but when the console table was introduced into England, it rapidly developed from the French idea of the luxurious console for ornament’s sake into the generous console table for utility’s sake, which we soon find in the English dining-rooms. It did not take long for this to suggest the sideboard.

Reference has already been made to the interest in consoles on the part of the architects of to-day. This brings to mind the fine console tables of the brothers Adam—pieces which the collector will do well to acquire whenever the opportunity presents itself—for Robert Adam was an architect who designed furniture but was not himself a cabinet-maker, though his influence on the classical taste in the furniture of the late eighteenth century was

decided. Robert Adam made exhaustive researches in France and Italy and reached as far as Spalato in Dalmatia, whither his interest in classic design took him.

In finding a place for the console in the modern house, it is well to remember its original use. Under a long mirror in the drawing-room was where it was generally placed, the tables being used in pairs to effect a studied balance. It can be advantageously placed in the hallway, where its dignity will add to the character of the entrance and at the same time take up but little room. In dining-rooms consoles are arranged to serve as sideboards. The type of console will naturally determine the type of mirror or decoration suitable to hang above it, all of which the furniture-collector should bear in mind.

CHAPTER XXIII

SÈVRES PORCELAIN

THERE is no continental porcelain better known by name to every one than the French porcelain of Sèvres. Nevertheless, fewer chance collectors and lovers of old china appear to know as much about it as they do about old Worcester, Derby, Chelsea, or Dresden. Over fifty marks for Sèvres, nearly two hundred and fifty marks of painters, decorators, and gilders of the Sèvres manufactory, as well as over thirty-five of the marks of some of the modelers are known. The principal marks of fabrication from 1753 to the present number some thirty-five. From this it will be seen that Sèvres forms a group in the history of ceramic art that requires some study to master its minutiæ and the indicia that will enable the collector to pass intelligent judgment on pieces that come to his notice. While it is true that the collecting of Sèvres can hardly be a “poor man’s hobby,” it also is true that knowing something about even a single piece in one’s general collection of old china, or of less specialized antiques and curios, justifies giving attention to the ramifications of the particular phase of the subject that may, for the moment, more definitely apply to the piece in hand. Thus if one possesses a bit of modern Sèvres of fine quality, the interest of that possession cannot but be intensified by a knowledge of earlier examples of the fabrique to which it is allied.

Fatal improvements have often marked the progress of the arts. It was so with that of the Royal Porcelain of Sèvres. The early pieces were of soft paste, but in 1804 the director, Monsieur Brogniart, was so pleased with the introduction of the hard paste instead that he utterly banished the soft paste, going so far as to destroy the secret formula for its making, and burying alive, as one might say, all the soft-paste material then on hand in the Parc de Versailles! Poor, deluded mortal! Probably he died unaware of having murdered the Sèvres porcelain of the finest type! Thus one begins to understand why the examples of the pâte tendre of the year 1753 through to the change for the hard pâte are so rare and so highly prized.

By old Sèvres we comprehend the pieces made from 1753 to 1804. This is the true vieux Sèvres. From 1753 to 1777 inclusive the letters of the alphabet, singly, from A to Z, (W omitted), indicate the years of manufacture. The year letters were placed between the two script L’s (one reversed). The letters A, B, and C indicate the pieces made at Vincennes (the original site of the manufactory) in 1753, 1754, and 1755 respectively, while the year of the removal of the manufactory to Sèvres, near St. Cloud, 1756, is indicated by the letter D between the double L’s. The L’s, of course, stood for the royal cipher of Louis XV, the first year, and then of Louis XVI of France from 1754 to September, 1792, when the French Republic was proclaimed and R.F. in monogram or in capital letters took its place.

In the study of any porcelain pieces the amateur should acquaint himself with the difference between soft and hard porcelain of any sort. The eighteenth-century porcelain has a soft, velvety “feel,” the glaze not being so glassy as that of hard porcelain. A pen-knife can cause abrasion on soft-paste porcelain, while hard paste will nearly always repel even the pressure of a steel point drawn over it. With soft paste one can see through the glaze, as it were; with hard paste one cannot. The enamel of the soft paste of Sèvres presents a delicate, milky glaze, exquisitely distinctive. The colors, too, show forth with velvety freshness. Bleu du roi—king’s blue—is the name given the cobalt blue of the decoration; turquoise designates the sky-blue which dates from 1752, when Helbot first compounded it; rose Pompadour and rose Dubarry are the names given the reds during the domination of those court favorites; violet pensée, the name for the pansy color; jaune clair, the name for the pale yellow (jonquille was as often used); vert pomme and vert jaune designated the apple-green, while vert anglais and vert pré was applied to the color we term grass-green.

There is also a velvety “feel” about the unenameled portions of porcelain, owing to its fine texture, which distinguishes it from hard porcelain. Looked at obliquely against the light so that a portion of the white surface and a portion of the painted surface equally receive a beam, there appear no differences in surfaces. With a soft porcelain the enamel seems so to incorporate with the soft paste as to present a surface of identical substance. Hard porcelain will exhibit a distinct difference in the lustre of the white surface and in the colored glazed surface. The color surface will invariably appear less brilliant.

In Sèvres porcelain of the first period the white ground predominates. The flowers and wreathes, etc., are delicately scattered over but do not crowd the white field. In later pieces the decorations came by degree to be the more assertive. Likewise, more gilding was employed. After 1770 portraits came into the decoration, and the designs of the Louis Quinze and those of the Louis Quatorze periods were superseded by designs which followed more along Egyptian and Etruscan lines. With the soft porcelain of Sèvres very large pieces could not be produced, but of the later hard-paste porcelain huge vases were often fabricated, marvels indeed of ceramic skill, though seldom as artistic and perfect in technical qualities.

The bisque statuettes of early Sèvres eagerly sought by museums and collectors are one of the interesting phases of this manufacture, though these objects scarcely can be said to approach those of Saxony. Their manufacture at Sèvres was almost given up after 1777. We have, however, from our own day, the much-treasured statuettes modeled for Sèvres by modern sculptors, among whom was the late Auguste Rodin.

From 1778 to 1792, inclusive, the year mark was indicated by the double letters AA to OO, within the interlaced L’s. During the period of the First Republic (1792-1804) the mark was, first, the interlaced F.R. (for République Française), then the letters R.F. with the word “Sèvres” below (“Sèvres” being written with or without the accent mark), or just the word “Sèvres,” and finally in the Consular period of this epoch “MN^le” over the word “Sèvres” (from 1803-1804). The years IX (1801), X (1802), and XI (1803) were designated by “T⁹,” “X,” and “II” in addition.

The mark of the first imperial epoch (1804-1814) was “M. Imp^le” over “de Sèvres,” two ornamental strokes below without accent mark, and then, later, the imperial eagle crowned with the legend, “Manufacture Imperiale. Sevres,” without accent mark (1810). The years XII (1804), XIII (1805) and XIV (1806) were marked by distinguishing symbols (1804 by two horizontal dashes, a dot above and one below; 1805 by two short lines aslant, a horizontal dash to the left and one to the right; the year 1806 by a mark resembling the prong of a trident, point upward).

The Sèvres marks of the second royal epoch consisted of the restored interlaced L’s of Louis XVIII and the fleur-de-lys between (1814-1823); of the interlaced C’s of Charles X, with the X between, or the fleur-de-lys or without (1824-1829); of just the fleur-de-lys (August 30th to December, 1830) and other marks in circles (1831-1834) and the cipher L.P. of Louis Philippe (1834-1848).

With the advent of the second republican epoch, 1848-1851, the “R.F.” was restored, only to be displaced by the imperial eagle (1852) with the letter S to left and “52” to the right of the eagle, and the crowned N of 1854 of the second imperial epoch (1852-1872), with the letter S to left and the year numeral to right of the N. The Third Republic brought back the “R.F.” again, followed by other marks, the one introduced in 1888 showing a potter at work, the whole within a double circle bearing the legend Nationale Sèvres Manufacture. From 1817 date marks were designated by the last two numerals of the year number only, as the date 1807, 1808, 1809, and 1810 had been designated by 7, 8, 9, and 10. The years 1811 to 1817, inclusive, had been designated by the small letters o.z, d.z, t.z, q.z, q.n, s.z, and d.s, standing, respectively, for the French onze, douze, treize, quatorze, quize, seize, and dix-sept.

The output of the Sèvres works in recent years has been very small, that institution having become a place for the education and training of French potters who will carry on the Sèvres traditions in other lines of their work. Such examples as are being made to-day take the form of presentation sets of ware especially designed and made as a gift to a potentate, a diplomat, or as a token of the French Government’s regard on such occasions as the marriage of a princess or a president’s daughter. Various quantities of it have been brought to this country at the time of expositions, and much of that has passed into the hands of the American collectors. It is still possible to pick up here and there good pieces that are genuine and thoroughly worth while.

Notwithstanding the advanced collector’s greater eagerness to collect Sèvres of the pâte-tendre period, later Sèvres is an alluring, interesting, entertaining, and possible field for the collector to enter without discouragement, and the pieces of this later fabrique well deserve a place in the cabinet or as a decorative feature in the home of good taste.

CHAPTER XXIV

EUROPEAN ENAMELS

Cloisonné: As early as the time of the ancients it was found that to prevent the running together of molten glass enamels, little boundaries of metal wire could be devised for soldering on to the metal base to mark the divisions of the pattern, or merely to bound areas, thus forming a number of diminutive shallow “pans,” into which the melted flux expanded, and when cooled and polished revealed a surface level with the height of the wire cloisons, giving them the appearance of being metal wires that had been imbedded in the glass. Gold, being neutral to every known color, is the harmonizer paramount, and thus when gold cloisons were used, the various colors were knit together into esthetically pleasing surfaces. The little metal threads running through modern Japanese enamels are such cloisons. Cloisonné enamel is the earliest sort of true enamel known to us. It was the favorite Byzantine process, and also that of the Greeks, the Anglo-Saxons, the Chinese, and later of the Japanese and the Russians.

Relief Cloisonné. This term is used to designate those pieces wherein the enamel either is below or above the tops of the cloisons, or where only certain cloisons enclose enamel, or a combination of the three sorts, giving to the surface of an object completed in this manner an interesting uneven ground of smooth but unpolished enamel. The cloisons of much of this work, especially the Hungarian and the Russian, are of filigree wire, or twisted wire, instead of flat wire such as was used for this purpose by Byzantine craftsmen.

Champlevé. This is the name given to the process of gouging out of a field (champ) of metal a number of hollows (lévées) or “ditches” for the pattern, in which cut-out depressions the vitreous color is fused and becomes enamel. It is akin to the ancient Egyptian method of scooping out surfaces in gold, soapstone, wool, and other materials, inserting therein bits of colored glass. Had the Egyptians practised true enameling, doubtless their process would have begun with champlevé, for they did not anticipate the Greek goldsmiths, who worked patterns on gold in cloisons long before they had any idea of applying vitreous color thereto. Indeed, the early Greeks and the Etruscans were wonderfully skilful at soldering gold. This champlevé process might be termed Gothic, succeeding in introduction though not superseding the Byzantine cloisonné. However, centuries before Byzantine or Gothic works appeared, the Celts produced champlevé enamels.

Repoussé. This term is applied to the base of those objects wherein the ornament is beaten out, in silhouette as it were, in the metal and the details marked by cloisons let in. Much of this work is easily mistaken for champlevé, but where the pattern is scooped out in champlevé, it is beaten out in repoussé. One who has visited the treasury of St. Mark’s in Venice will recall that the plaquettes from a Gospel cover to be found there were executed in repoussé—the pattern simply hammered in the silver, which afterward was filled with translucent enamel. In Oriental repoussé work the metal divisions between the fields of enamel are beaten up, the reverse of the process just described. In modern Chinese enamel-work the repoussé process has superseded champlevé for effects of the sort.

Basse Taille. This is the process of engraving the ground, which is to receive translucent enamel, so that the lines made by the graver will show up through the translucent vitrified coating and produce a greater play of light, or define patterns, the veining of leaves, the marking of petals, the lines of draperies, etc. The French enamelers of the eighteenth century habitually employed the process, and Indian enamelers preceded them by at least a century, while its invention is ascribed to an Italian, John of Pisa, in 1286. This chasing or engraving upon gold or silver for the purpose of showing graduation in the vitreous color to be applied is akin to champlevé.

Plique à Jour. Enamels of this sort consist of certain screen-like objects in filigree with their unbacked cloison divisions filled up with translucent enamel. Plique à Jour enamel may be compared to stained-glass windows, the principle being the same, only carried out on a miniature scale. An excellent example of this is a fifteenth-century cup in the Victoria and Albert Museum, while the Crown of St. Stephen, dating from 1072 A.D., would appear to be the earliest known work of the sort that has survived. The Russians of the nineteenth century so perfected the process that plique à jour enamel is often called Russian enamel. Doubtless the forming of cups, caskets, and other precious objects of gems in unbacked mosaic suggested the style, and the jeweled cup of Chosroes to be seen in the Bibliothéque Nationale, Paris, may well be considered a forerunner of it.

Encrusted Enamel. This may be defined as enamel used to enrich raised and modeled gold-work where this vitreous color is neither entrenched, as in cloisonné or in champlevé, nor painted, like Limoges work, on a flat field. The craftsmen of the Renaissance, both in Italy and in France, produced exquisite jewels of encrusted enamel, imitated by the Florentine jewelers of to-day who display their wares along the shops of the Ponte Vecchio. Painted enamels in this group may be sub-divided as follows:

(A) Those works which have vitreous colors added here and there to subdue, to correct, or to outline and decorate enamel surfaces, such as the pale yellows added to soften glaring whites, red to restore a color unsuccessful in the firing, outlines of plants and other forms and inscriptions. Used in combination with both cloisonné and champlevé, and later to add further decorations to basse taille surfaces.

(B) Those works painted with successive firings of translucent or transparent colored enamels over a primary enamel ground that first has been fused to its metal field of gold, silver, or copper. Limoges enamels of this sort, whether in color or in grisaille (gray), as also are the much-neglected enamels known as Venetian enamels.

So much for the general broad divisions of enamels, though it must be borne in mind that there was often employed in the working out of a single object more than a single process. As color plays so important a part in the evolution of the history of enamels, the following table may prove useful to the collector as determining the more important colors of the enameler’s palette at different periods in the history of the art:

COLORS AND PERIODS

Nearly every writer upon enamels quotes the convenient commendation of the Greek sophist, Philostratus, who went to Rome in the reign of the Emperor Severus, about 200 A.D., to teach rhetoric. In the description of a boar hunt in his “Icones,” wherein he describes the trappings of the horses of the barbarians (Gauls or Britons), Philostratus writes: “For the barbarians of the region of the ocean [islanders?] are skilled, as it is said, in fusing colors upon heated brass [copper?] which become as hard as stone and render the ornament thus produced durable.” The Romans in Italy knew nothing of such things. Labarte and other authorities would have it that this passage refers to Gallo-Roman work, though such is rarely to be met with; while others claim for it reference to the work of British craftsmen, perhaps under design-influence of the Romans. Probably enameling was known to the Celts and to the Britons independent of Roman occupation. Certainly the Scoto-Celtic and the Britanno-Celtic tendency in design has little in common with that of the ancient civilized world of Greece, of Rome, or of Egypt. It is just possible the ingenious Celts invented champlevé.

With the rise of the Eastern Empire in the fourth century A.D., with its capital at Byzantium, came in that style of art known to us as the Byzantine, just as the North Italians produced the Lombardic style and western Europe the Gothic. Byzantine enamel was rigid and conventional in design but highly decorative and symbolical. At first the direct influence of Greek and Roman art affected their pictorial representations, as we see Christus in earlier work depicted as a clean-shaven, beautiful young man, an ideal that soon gave way to the sad representation of the Man of Sorrows. From the tenth century on, Byzantine ecclesiastical art was barren of invention. With the waning of the empire in 1057, the art of the Byzantine enamelers declined, and that of the Italians and the western Europeans blossomed forth untrammeled by stiff convention. Lombardic architecture and Gothic carving had helped to pave the way for the broader art of the Middle Ages, which no longer confined itself to cloisonné but began to put forth champlevé enamels of great beauty likewise. Indeed, in Gothic times western craftsmen rarely made use of cloisonné except for personal ornaments and jewelry. The famous “Lindauer Evangeliar,” one of the chief treasures collected by the late J. Pierpont Morgan, exhibits upon its covers superb examples of early enameling.

With the revival of classical learning which brought about the Renaissance, and the subsequent development of secular thought, art ceased to be what it had been throughout the Middle Ages—merely the handmaid of the church. No longer did the enamelers, Byzantine, Gothic, or Lombardic, work solely to adorn religious works; and ecclesiastical design broadened into secular application, a return of classical usages to a heritage of beauty and unrestraint from which, for some centuries, art had been kept by ecclesiasticism. By the twelfth century the art was well established to Cologne, Trèves, Huy, Maestricht, and Verdun, thence traveling perhaps to Paris. Limoges and the Rhenish provinces of France became prolific in champlevé enamels by the end of the twelfth century. It is to 1189 A.D. that the earliest known enamels of Limoges are ascribed. There an enormous quantity of work, good, bad, and indifferent, was turned out during the thirteenth century, an art turning to a trade thereafter, and declining to neglect in the fourteenth, and then going out of fashion altogether.

However, toward the end of the fifteenth century the public in general had broken through Byzantine, Gothic, and Lombardic esthetic domination and breathed the clearer air of the Renaissance, becoming imbued with a desire for gentler, more beautiful things; and the old town of Limoges, ever awake to the commerce of demand, again started up her enameling ovens and went at the art with renewed vigor, retaining a supremacy that has handed down to us priceless treasures of the sort, exquisite and satisfying. This fine style may be said to date from 1530 to 1580 (being preceded by the early style 1475-1530), followed by a minute style, 1580-1630 preceding the decadence that dated from 1630 to the close of the manufactory in the eighteenth century.

Limoges enamels immediately bring to mind the names of such great artists in enamels as the Pénicauds, Courtoys, Limousin, Raymond, Martin Didier and Jean Court, dit Vigier, and in the decline Jean Laudin.

The painted enamels of the early style are executed with much white painting over purplish-brown grounds, the figures bearing strong resemblance to the Flemish type. The coloring in these examples is very beautiful. The painted enamels of the fine style exhibit the great advance achieved by draftsmen under Italian influence. The glazes are finer and the finishing process a more careful one. At this period painting in grisaille became popular. By this term is meant monochrome painting in enamel the light being worked up over a dark