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Parent Category: Technical Articles from Journal Back Copies

Category: Technical Articles 2004

Dan Nicholson

During a three month holiday in Australia I met several leading local enamellers, including Jenny Gore who was born in Adelaide and currently lives in Port Noarlunga, S.Australia.

Jenny's background was in Graphic Design, which she studied at the S.Australia School of Art, where she later became a lecturer, before moving on to enamelling in 1973.

She has received numerous awards, culminating in the 2003 Queen's Birthday Honours when she was the proud recipient of the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for her work as an internationally regarded artist in her field as a teacher and for the promotion of enamelling in Australia and overseas.

In her work Jenny uses copper as a base, with a series of firings of around 3 minutes each at kiln temperatures between 750 and 900°C. Imagery is built up with many thin layers of powdered enamels, spraying with dilute gum to hold each sifting in place and sometimes using hand-cut stencils to define specific shapes. Each layer is fired separately, the whole process taking 20-30 firings, cleaning off any oxides and stoning down of imperfections before the next layer is applied. After the application of each layer, the piece is dried on top of the warm kiln, has any sgraffito drawing done and edges of imagery cleaned up before re-firing.

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