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| Equipage, watch and watchcase in gold and enamel, 1777-1778. Enamel painted figures marked W. Craft (William Hopkins Craft). British Museum Collection. |
Enamelling is an ancient craft practiced in various ways across the the world. Enamel is made by heating and fusing glass powder to a metal base to create a glossy surface. Sometimes this can be done in segments to form patterns, or the enamelled surface can be larger and then painted or, through an innovation of the late 1740s, printed. Over the eighteenth century, these painted and printed enamels gained in popularity, predominantly made in London, Birmingham, the Black Country towns of Bilston and Wednesbury, and some in Liverpool, and these are the focus here.
Unless signed, it is often difficult to distinguish where surviving enamels were made, or by whom, and there is no reason to believe that a single item had the same maker from start to finish. The craftsmanship of these articles was not just in the enamelling and painting, but in the forming of the metal (whether chasing in gold, or the forming of copper boxes) and even in the making of increasingly clever devices such as clasps and hinges. The multiple skills for making copper boxes, for example, were prevalent in Birmingham and the Black Country and supported the development of enamelling in the area. These boxes could be formed into elaborate shapes such as the apple, below, as well as a menagerie of animals, almost certainly made in these areas. There is no reason, though, why finished boxes would not have been sold to other enamellers and painters, so the idea that surviving eighteenth-century enamels were the product of one person or even one town is over-estimated. When the maker of enamels is noted it is the painter, so the craftsmanship of these other makers is invariably lost.
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| Enamel bonbonnière in the shape of an apple, c. 1770, probably made in Birmingham or the Black Country. Private Collection. |
Signed Enamels and the London Trade
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| Pendant with portrait of Elizabeth Prentice by Horace Hone, 1807, enamel on copper. Sold at Christie's in 2013 for £6,875. |
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| Design for enamelled watchcase and decorative chain, c. 1766, considered to be by George Michael Moser. MET Collection. |
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| Watch by J. Snelling and watchcase in painted enamel by Moser (George M. Moser). Private Collection. |
These were finely made articles set in gold, but most surviving painted enamels served a broader market and were unsigned. There has been an historical tendency to ascribe the finest painted boxes to London and poorer quality painting to the provinces,*3* often because Victorian historians believed that provincial enamelling did not begin until the 1760s, which has been proved incorrect by more recent research. Also, fine painters such as Amos Green and Moses Haughton had links to the Midland enamel trade showing that these presumptions warrant interrogation.
Birmingham and Black Country Enamelling
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| Base of floral enamel box, maker unknown, c. 1750s, probably made in Birmingham or the Black Country. Bowes Museum Collection. |
Birmingham, Bilston and Wednesbury are a selection of towns closely situated to each other in the English counties of Warwickshire and Staffordshire, but now part of the West Midlands. These towns contained a network of artisans working within the enamelling trade.
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| Set of painted enamel buttons. Wolverhampton Museum Collection. |
The first of these town's recorded as adopting enamelling was Bilston. A local physician who knew the areas well, Richard Wilkes, recorded in his diary in 1737 that:
Upon the Death of Queen Caroline, mourning Rings handsomely enamell’d wᵗʰ this Inscription on the outside Qu. Car. Ob. 20 Sep 1737 Æ. 54. were sold at 4/ a Dozen, & lookt very little inferior to those made of Gold, especially upon a Gentleman’s Finger. All sorts of Toys are made of this Metal at Bilston, as well as in London.*4*
Toys were not children's playthings in the eighteenth century, but adornments such as rings, button, buckles, equipage (chatelaines) and decorative boxes.
Sources are sparse on early enamelling, but it is conceivable that the Midland enamellers refined the art of enamelling onto copper. A 1699 treatise on enamelling noted the difficulties of enamelling onto copper compared to gold and silver due to impurities in the metal affecting the enamel.*5* Throughout the eighteenth century copper was increasingly used to make enamelled boxes and other adornments with increasing refinement. In about 1753 Reinhold Angerstein visited Bilston and noted that the town 'consists mainly of factories for metal boxes' continuing that he 'viewed one or two of these works, where the people were occupied with the making of paste gems and enamelled work to be incorporated into boxes'.*6* These boxes were not only formed from sheet copper, but had to be hinged and the lid and base fitted closely to provide smooth opening and closing. Too tight and the box might open with a jerk spilling its contents, too loose and the contents might fall out in the pocket. The making of boxes, hinges and clasps were skilful crafts in themselves, even before they were enamelled and painted.
Bilston was probably the most prolific centre for producing copper-based enamel "toys" in the eighteenth-century. At the peak of the trade in the 1760s it had seven enamellers listed in the earliest local directory, more than any other town, including London.*7*
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| Gypsies in a Landscape by Moses Haugton the elder. Birmingham Museums Collection. |
The Wednesbury enamel trade is not thought to be as large as Bilston's. The most well known enameller in the town was Hyla Holden, described as an enameller and toy maker (toys, again, meaning adornments, like those depicted) in his 1766 will.*8* He employed three apprentices between 1748 and 1763, the first, John Leonard, being apprenticed as a 'boxmaker'; the second, John Hawkins, being a 'Box painter'; and the third, Billy Davis, was apprenticed as an 'enambler'.*9* An unreferenced source, written in 1849, notes that Holden employed Moses Haughton as an enamel painter, who was born in Wednesbury and later became a renowned painter especially of still life (image of Haughton's later work above). Apart from a few, the names of the box painters are lost as they did not sign their work.
Another unreferenced account of Wednesbury enamelling comes from the Wednesbury-born historian Frederick William Hackwood. In 1889 he noted that a Wednesbury firm 'discovered the secret of a pigment which gave to certain of their best wares a delicate pink tint, and that they amassed a fortune by it', but that the secret was later stolen by other makers.*10* Although unreferenced, the account was probably based on local oral histories so probably bore some truth, but it is unclear exactly what boxes this references. The consumer desire for pink enamel is also seen in Aris's Birmingham Gazette in 1751 when Abraham Seeman, an 'enamelling painter' advertised 'enamelling colours, especially the rose colours' which he noted had been used by the 'Most of the eminent painters of Birmingham, Wednesbury and Bilston'.*11*
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| Enamel snuffbox or bonbonnière, probably made in Birmingham or the Black Country, c. 1750s. Private Collection. |
One of the earliest Birmingham enamellers was John Taylor. Taylor was noted as working as a japanner in Birmingham in Wilkes's 1737 diary, but is thought to have also entered the enamelling trade in the 1740s. Birmingham was also important in the development of transfer printing onto enamel, discussed shortly.
In the Birmingham Directory of 1767 four enamellers were listed (image above), three of them also working as japanners, and the other being a button maker. There was overlap between the enamelling and japanning trades in the skills required in painting the boxes. The enameller Thomas Humstone, for example, had been apprenticed to Thomas Arden in Birmingham as a 'painter' in 1759.*12* This suggests that the Birmingham likely bought in some boxes and other bases for enamelling and painting from Bilston nearby. The Directory described the enamelled goods made in Birmingham as 'Candlesticks, Snuff-Boxes, Ink-stands, Ink-Cases, Tweezers, Tooth-pick Cases, Quadrille Pooles, Smelling Bottles, Clock and Watch Faces, and all sorts of small Trinkets for Ladies Watches' so a variety of goods were produced in the town.*13* Watch faces are considered an underestimated production of Birmingham enamellers, as they were unmarked, or marked with the name of the watchmaker or watch retailer rather than the maker of the face.
Further Information
NOTES
© Jen Dixon (University of Birmingham) 2015. All text belongs to the author (mappingbirmingham@gmail.com).