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Parent Category: Projects from Journal Back Copies

Category: Projects 2001

Kathleen Kay

Following my article in the previous Journal I hope to inspire less experienced enamellers to play with some design ideas, using a variety of decorative media and the simple technique of embedding. By experimenting with opaque and transparent powders, firing temperatures and timing it is possible to control the amount of 'slump', relief or texture on the surface of the enamel.

To just touch on simple theory, we must be sure that our first firing of enamel has been hot enough to achieve fusion with the metal, otherwise at some time everything will pop off. This applies to both the front and the counter-enamel. For subsequent front layers, as long as our choices of enamel powders are compatible, we can either lower the firing temperature or give a much briefer firing, sufficient to fuse enamel to enamel and to just hold our decorative additions in place. As an example, this is best described by firing enamel threads. Transparent enamel threads, fired into a soft, transparent enamel powder for an average 2 minutes at 800°C, will probably have spread in varying widths, according to the original size, maybe merging into neighbouring threads (particularly if using transparent yellow/green threads), and the whole surface will be smooth and flat.

The extreme opposite is to fuse threads that are temporarily held, in the precise position, on the thinnest sifting of fine grains over the previously fired same surface colour.

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