Pliqué a Jour Seahorse

I just finished up my pliqué a jour class.  I was intrigued by this technique ever since I read about it in my enameling book.  I had read about this cool bowl in Cellini's treatises on goldsmithing that sounded like some sort of combo of goldsmithing and stained glass, but until I saw pictures of the technique in my enameling book I didn't know what it was called.

Once I had a term to search, I started trying to see how far back pliqué a jour went.  So far the earliest example I can find is the Mérode Cup from the 15th century.  If you have any other examples of pre-16th century pliqué a jour, I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to see them!  I know it was rare during this time and only possessed by the ridiculously wealthy, but it certainly existed.

There seem to be two types of pliqué a jour.  The first one, and probably easiest is piercing your design into copper, gold, or fine silver and then filling the holes with enamel.  (This is very simplified, but in a nutshell...) You take dry enamel, wash it with distilled water, mix in some klyr fire, then you take a spatula with some wet enamel on it and touch it to the side of a hole while dragging it across.  This fills up the space using capillary action.  Let it completely dry (can be sped along by placing on top of or near a kiln), and then put in a kiln and fire to the orange peel stage (just before the glass completely melts the grains will start to merge and it looks like the skin of an orange).  This makes kind of a webbing that you can build on top of.  Repeat until all of the holes are completely filled to a little above full.  Then fire it completely so that the glass melts completely and goes clear.  Take an alundum stone and grind the top of the piece under some running water till the glass is flush with the rest of the piece.  Work it with wet sandpaper of finer and finer grits till you've attained the finish that you want.  Fire one final time to re-melt the enamel and give it a glossy finish.  If using copper, you'll have to pickle between each firing.  I use citric acid pickle for enamel as it doesn't seem to affect the colors of the enamels.

The second technique, that I haven't gotten a chance to try yet, looks to be closer to the early examples (Mérode cup and Cellini's bowl description) that I have found.  It sounds like you basically do cloisonné on top of mica, or another substance that can be mostly peeled off the back, and then remove the mica by scrubbing or etching with acid.  Would love to try this technique, but guess I can't till I manage to buy an enameling kiln. Le sigh. ;)

For my first piece, I decided to go with the piercing method as it seemed a little less likely to all fall apart.  I'm still trying to improve my technique with cloisonné on metal, I wasn't feeling brave enough to try it without any yet!  Above is a hi-res picture of my seahorse, and the small one is closer to actual size.  It's really pretty tiny; right around 1.5".  I was grabbing some enameling supplies in Lonnie's and saw this little die cut on my way out.  I thought it would be cute if I pierced some scales along its back, gave it some defined fins, and a little tummy.  I'm quite happy with it as a first attempt at this new technique.