Ten Firings, One Wing

I keep counting the firings. I'm not supposed to — a piece is done when it's done, not when a number says so — but I count them anyway. The smallest enamel pendant I made this week went into the kiln more than ten times. Each firing is a small held breath. Each one can crack the glass, or muddy the colour, or do nothing at all, in which case you fire it again.

People sometimes think of enamel as paint. It isn't. It's powdered glass laid into engraved channels in the metal — the technique is called champlevé, an old word for "raised field" — and it has to be fused into place at temperature, a layer at a time. You build the colour up the way light builds up after dawn.

Here is what actually happens. First, the metal is engraved by hand. The cells have to be deep enough to hold the colour and shaped to give the design its bones. This part is slow. Engraving a small bird's wing, feather by feather, takes hours. There's no machine that does this work the way a hand does. Computer-cut cells look computer-cut. The eye knows.

Then the enamel is prepared. Vitreous enamel arrives as a powder of finely ground glass. Each colour is a separate jar. The powder is washed (this matters — particles of grit will ruin a firing) and laid wet into the engraved channels with a small tool. You set the metal aside to dry the moisture out, then you fire.

The kiln runs hot. The temperature melts the glass particles into a glassy layer that fuses to the metal. The first firing is the most uncertain. The colour at this stage looks nothing like the colour it will become. You take the piece out, let it cool, and look. Then you do it again. Each firing adds depth and clarity and sometimes a small disaster that you have to repair before continuing.

Cracks happen. So does crawling, where the colour pulls away from an edge. So does discolouration when a stray particle of one colour contaminates another. There are very few problems in champlevé you cannot fix; there is no problem you can fix in a hurry. Everything is wait, look, fire again.

The wings on the little bird I made this week took the longest. I engraved each feather first. Then I laid the colour in feather by feather, fired, looked, fired again. Some feathers needed only six firings. The wing tips needed thirteen.

I'm telling you this not to brag about patience — patience isn't really a virtue, it's just what you have when you love a thing enough — but to tell you what you're looking at when you see a champlevé piece. You're looking at a few weeks of small held breaths. You're looking at a technique that has not been improved in any meaningful way for nearly a thousand years, because there is no way to improve it. You're looking at one of the oldest forms of jewellery there is, made by a real person, this week.

Come and see one in person at Paddington Markets. The light catches them in a way no photo does.