THE CRAFT
Fired, not poured.
Mineral color, painted by hand under a microscope, and melted into metal at 1,470°F until it becomes glass. This page is short because the work is long.
HOW IT IS MADE
Five stages, many firings.
- 01
Ground and mixed.
Enamel begins as glass, colored with metal oxides. It is ground fine and mixed by hand into something a brush can carry.
- 02
Painted, under magnification.
With brushes that hold a few hairs, at a scale you need a microscope to see. The color going on is not the color that will come out — the painter is working from memory of what the fire does.
- 03
Fired at 1,470°F.
The powder melts, flows, and fuses into the metal. It cools clear and hard, and it is now part of the piece rather than a layer on it.
- 04
Then again. And again.
Each color has to be laid down and fixed before the next can go on top. A finished portrait passes through the kiln many times.
- 05
Checked, at the same magnification.
One brushstroke too many, one degree too hot, and the piece starts over from a blank oval. A flaw invisible to the naked eye becomes permanent the moment it goes back in.
THE NARROW WINDOW
1,470°F.
Silver melts at 1,760°F. Enamel fuses at 1,470°F. There are fewer than three hundred degrees between making a piece and destroying it — and the kiln does not tell you which happened until you open it.
That narrow window is why so few workshops still fire enamel onto silver, and why the ones that do are slow.
The piece that ends up in your box passed every one of its tests. The ones that didn't never left the workshop.
The whole quality system, in two sentences
PERMANENCE
It does not fade.
Fired enamel is mineral color fused into metal. It does not fade with light, does not peel, and does not wear thin. Miniatures painted four hundred years ago sit in museums with their color unchanged.
What it is, honestly, is glass — so it will chip if you strike it hard against something harder, and it can crack under sudden temperature change. Those are the two things it minds. Neither happens in ordinary wear.
Cared for reasonably, a piece made this way will outlast the person who first wore it. That is the whole point of making it this way.
MATERIALS
What it is made of.
950 silver
95% pure — higher purity than sterling (92.5%). Chosen for how it behaves under the kiln, not for the number itself.
Polished silver
The silver itself, polished and left uncoated — no plating over it at all.
Uncoated silver darkens with time. That is what silver does, and it is not a fault: a silver polishing cloth brings it back, and one comes in the box. Many people come to prefer the way it settles. What will not change is the enamel — it is glass, and glass does not tarnish.
Leaving it bare buys something else, too. A piece with no plating can go back into the kiln, so if it is ever chipped it can usually be repaired — the thing a plated piece can never do. Stones, if yours has them, come out before the fire and are set again after.
18K gold vermeil — 3 microns
Typical gold plating is 0.02–0.03 microns. Ours is 3 — about a hundred times thicker. That is the difference between a finish measured in months and one measured in years.
It still wears eventually. Everything plated does. We say so because the alternative is you finding out on your own.
It is also the one finish we cannot put back into the kiln — the plating would not survive the heat. Warmth on the wrist costs you the repair route; bare silver keeps it. Neither is the wrong choice, and we would rather you made it knowing.
Solid 18K gold
Not plated — gold all the way through, with nothing to wear off. It takes a higher working temperature, which lets the painter work finer detail than silver allows.
Like bare silver, it can go back into the kiln, so a chip can usually be repaired. What gold adds is that nothing changes in the meantime: no plating to thin, no surface to darken, no cloth to keep in the drawer.
What we don't use
No resin. No cold enamel. No printing. No decals. No transfers. No plated brass.
Printing would take seconds and cost almost nothing. That is precisely the reason it is everywhere, and the reason we don't do it.