An Introduction to Email en Resille sur Verre
- Details
- Parent Category: Technical Articles from Journal Back Copies
- Category: Technical Articles 2009
Juanita Navarro
The research described in this article started about two years ago due to not being able to find out very much information about the enamelling technique known as émail en résille sur verre (EER), from the French for ‘enamel in a net (or network) on glass’. The technique is also referred to as émail en résille, or sometimes simply en résille. What little information was found seemed to be contradictory and, more importantly, did not fully agree with my own observations during examination or conservation of nine objects in the Victoria and Albert Museum and two in the Wallace Collection, London. This research is my own personal quest to find out how these pieces were made and to catalogue the objects. A database of literature on the subject is also being compiled.
It seems likely that the EER technique was first used in France around the late sixteenth or early seventeenth centuries, and it may have been used around 1620 in Central Europe, somewhere in South Germany or Prague. Visual connections have been found between prints by the engraver Valentin Sezenius (dated prints from 1619-24, perhaps made in Ansbach or Prague) and EER plaques with figurative images. Fig. 1 shows a Nativity scene based on one of Sezenius’ prints.1 Sezenius himself may have been the maker of the EER plaques as well but so far no proof has been found. Other EER plaques have geometric patterns or stylised flower designs and, as yet, no definite attributions.
