CLOISONNE - beautiful handmade in China

We visited a 'factory' where the items are made by hand, painted and kiln fired (8 times) to produce a beautiful item that looked like fine china (the breakable kind!).

The "canvas" for a Cloisonné pattern is made of copper.

A coppersmith fashions the copper by hand into the shape required. He sits and hammers away for hours.
The pattern is imprinted onto the base, and copper wire that is approximately 1/16 of an inch in diameter is bent into the desired pattern and soldered into place. This is painstaking work.
To make to coloured fillings various pigments are ground into a fine powder. Then comes enamel filling. The pigment is added to each cell compartment by hand. See the droppers in the mix?
Once the first filling is complete, the piece is fired in a crucible. As the copper base turns red the pigments will melt filling each cell. There is a slight amount of shrinkage to the pigments on the first firing, and some re-filling of the cells will be required before a second firing. There can be as many as six or seven or more firings to achieve the desired results.
Once all of the compartments are sufficiently full the object is placed on a motorized wheel, and cutting emery is used to even the surface. (Didn't have anyone working on that the day we visited, so no photo). The object will be fired for a final time, then polished with whetstone and carbon.

The exposed metal filigree is electroplated with gold or silver to prevent oxidation from dulling the filigree. Then the object will be given a final polish.


Check out the beautiful end result...........

Decisions Decisions!!