Valuchi Atelier — enamel dial in progress

Valuchi Atelier

The art of enamel

Enamel dial samples on the firing tray

Glass, silver and eight hundred degrees

Enamel begins as coloured glass, ground with water until it is finer than flour. Laid wet onto a silver dial and fired, it fuses into a surface that will not fade, scratch or yellow — the same colour in a hundred years as on the day it left the kiln.

That permanence is bought with risk. Each firing lasts under a minute at eight hundred degrees, and the enameller judges the moment by the glow of the metal alone. A dial is fired six to eight times before it is finished; a single crack at any stage and it is broken up and the silver recovered. At Valuchi Atelier we work in four traditional techniques — cloisonné, champlevé, paillonné and miniature painting — each with its own discipline, and its own way of going wrong.

Grinding enamel pigment in an agate mortar
Coloured glass is ground with water in an agate mortar until the grain is finer than flour. The finer the powder, the deeper the colour will read after firing.
Mixing the enamel paste
Mixed to a wet paste, the enamel is carried to the dial on a brush trimmed to a handful of hairs — sometimes to one.
Laying enamel onto the dial under magnification
Under the loupe, each cell is filled a fraction of a millimetre at a time. A single dial may hold more than two hundred of them.
Dial glowing in the kiln
Then the kiln: eight hundred degrees, under a minute, judged by the glow of the metal. A finished dial has survived this six to eight times.