From Mesopotamian goldsmiths to modern makers, the story of enamel is a story of transformation — of sand into glass, and that glass fused onto metal to create fragile yet powerful works of art glowing with colour and light.
The earliest known enamelled objects were discovered around the 13th century BC in a Mycenaean tomb at Kouklia, Cyprus: six gold rings decorated with layers of coloured glass fused onto their surface. Archaeologists have also uncovered jewellery from Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece adorned with vitreous enamel. These first enamels were not yet the clear, luminous surfaces we know today, but rather opaque, jewel-like colours created by melting ground glass into recessed cells. In these early forms, enamel often appeared only in shades of blue and white — yet even then, we can see the human desire to capture light, to make metal glow with the hues of the sky, the sea, and the divine.
Centuries later, enamel found new splendour in the hands of Byzantine goldsmiths, who transformed it into a sacred art. Using the cloisonné technique — delicate gold wires forming tiny walls to hold molten glass — they created miniature mosaics that shimmered like the domes of their churches. Saints, angels, and emperors came to life in glowing blues, reds, and greens, each piece a fragment of divine light captured in metal. As Byzantine influence spread through Europe, enamel became the language of devotion and prestige. In Limoges, France, artisans developed champlevé, carving recesses directly into copper and filling them with coloured glass. The result was bolder, more painterly — perfect for reliquaries, crosses, and royal ornaments.
By the Renaissance, enamel had become the jeweller’s canvas. Masters began to paint directly onto metal, layering translucent colours and firing them repeatedly to create delicate portraits and intricate scenes. In the centuries that followed, enamelling spread across Europe, adorning watches, snuff boxes, and objets d’art — most famously the intricate works of Fabergé. Each era reinterpreted the material, yet the essence remained unchanged: the union of fire, glass, and metal.
The Napoleonic egg, sometimes referred to as the Imperial Napoleonic egg, is a Fabergé egg, one of a series of fifty-two jewelled eggs made under the supervision of Peter Carl Fabergé.
- It was created in 1912 for the last Tsar of Russia Nicholas II as a gift to his mother the Dowager Empress Maria Fyodorovna.
- The egg is part of the Matilda Geddings Gray collection of Faberge and currently resides in the Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art in Nashville, Tennessee.
Chuck Redden from Petersburg, VA, United States of America, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
By the late nineteenth century, artists of the Art Nouveau movement — such as René Lalique and Georges Fouquet — transformed enamel into an expressive art form, rediscovering its emotional and sculptural potential. Lalique, in particular, stood out for his poetic approach: combining enamel with glass, horn, and gemstones to create ethereal jewels that blurred the line between ornament and sculpture. In his hands, enamel was no longer mere decoration but a living material that captured light, emotion, and movement.
One of René Lalique’s most celebrated creations, the Dragonfly-Woman Ornament (c. 1897–1898), embodies the spirit of Art Nouveau — a union of nature, fantasy, and exquisite craftsmanship. Combining translucent plique-à-jour enamel, horn, gold, and gemstones, the piece transforms a woman’s body into the wings and tail of a dragonfly. It is both jewel and sculpture, sensual and unsettling, capturing Lalique’s fascination with metamorphosis and his belief that jewellery could transcend adornment to become art. Today it stands as one of the defining works of the era — a moment when enamel and imagination fused into something timeless.
The dragonfly - woman ornament by René Lalique - sprklg, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
In the twentieth century, enamel broke free from its ornamental confines and entered the world of modern art and studio jewellery. Artists embraced its unpredictability — its tendency to flow, crack, and surprise — as a form of creative expression. Studio jewellers such as Margaret De Patta and Jean Dunand continued to explore its potential as a medium of modern design.
Today, vitreous enamel continues to fascinate both traditional and contemporary makers. It endures because no other material captures colour in quite the same way; its glow is neither surface nor paint, but light itself, suspended in glass.
For contemporary jewellers like me, enamel is both ancient and alive. Each firing carries a sense of mystery — the instant when powder turns to liquid and solidifies into something timeless. It’s a reminder that even in a modern studio, we are still working with the same elements that artisans in Mesopotamia once did: earth, fire, and a little faith in transformation