Laying on the

COLOR

Enamel and gemstones make a dazzling couple.

By Marlene A. Prost

It's a perennial question for jewelry designers. How do I get more color in my designs, more oomph, more pizazz, more sizzle, more flash, and all without sending the price through the roof? For many, the answer is simple: Use a more colorful medium.

Enamel has long been a favorite of artisans intrigued by the play of color and light. In recent decades, as enamel has moved from the arts and crafts community into mainstream trade, designers have incorporated gemstones into their enamel jewelry as accents. The result is an explosion of color that enhances both design elements: The gemstone adds value and cachet to the enamel, while the enamel magnifies the color of the gemstone, at far less cost than multiple stones.

ABOVE: Cloisonné pendant with 22K gold and boulder opal. Photo by Ralph Gabriner, courtesy Ricky Frank Enamels. TOP: Ten-layer enamel pin/pendant with 24K gold cloisonné and black opal set in 18K gold. Photo courtesy Magick/Fusager Demski Design.

"[Enamel] gives you a rather relatively inexpensive method of bringing color to jewelry," says Leo De Vroomen of De Vroomen Design in London, an upscale designer who often uses enamel to complement colored gems. For example, he says, "To get a green look, you have to spend a fortune on stones. By using enamel, you can make relatively large areas of green without using thousands [of dollars]."

"To me [enamel and colored stones] are very complementary," says Falcher Fusager of Magick/Fusager Demski Design in Berkeley, California. "You bring the color out in a different form. Here you have enamel, and it continues in the gemstone. . . . Stones are limited; you can work in more ways with enamel. You can shape shapes. You can have the greater saturation of color and brilliance you have with the best of the gemstones, but you can create it in any way you like."

For many years, enamel jewelry in the United States was seen more as a decorative art than as a valuable commodity in the jewelry trade. Enamel is essentially colored glass fused to metal, usually silver, gold, or copper, at high temperatures of around 800 C (1,472 F). The technique of cloisonné enameling — shaping enamel between thin, flat wires — originated in metalwork in ancient Cyprus and was transmitted to China, where it was further developed by Chinese artisans.

Fusager was working as a street artist when he became enchanted with cloisonné enamel jewelry as art.

"When [Magick] started in the trade 10 years ago, we were specifically told enamel like ours would be difficult [to sell in retail stores]. Our challenge was to take a design from the arts and crafts community and bring it into the trade." Today, three-fourths of Magick's business is with jewelry stores. And Fusager notes that there is a growing interest in the more complex, "progressive" artistic designs that have always intrigued enamelists.

Designing with enamel is still "more about art than about fashion" for Ricky Frank of Ricky Frank Enamels in Marietta, Georgia, an enamelist with roots in the art community.

"Most enamelists, it takes them so long to make a living, so if they are commercially oriented, they find something else to do. I was an artist for years. . . . I fell in love with enamel because of the color. I realized if I wanted to sell it, I should make jewelry," says Frank.

His artistic leanings are reflected in his signature designs: moody, multicolor miniatures with abstract motifs like the sun, the moon, and the empowerment of women, using complementary colored stones as accents.

For designers like Fusager and Frank, colored gemstones are a natural extension of their interest in the play of color and light on enamel. However, the stones remain accents and are selected to pick up the colors in the enamel and "tie it together," says Fusager. "We focus more on the enamel colors, making them thicker and richer; the stones are just to enhance the enamel. . . . We love gemstones, but try not to [have them] dominate."

Fusager uses diamonds for his more "serious" pieces and colored stones, like smaller sapphires, orange and red garnets, and tourmaline, for his "lighter" pieces. His wholesale prices range from $100 to $8,000; he has also designed a $16,000 choker with diamonds set between enamel panels.

In terms of enameling technique, Fusager does primarily cloisonné. He also uses basse-taille, in

18K gold and enamel brooch/hair ornament set with a round cabochon sapphire and diamonds. Photo courtesy De Vroomen Design Ltd.

which a design of varying depths is cut into the metal and filled or covered with clear enamel. The silver backgrounds he uses provide a larger color palette than gold because the silver reflects white light and natural color, he says. A gold background reflects a yellow tinge that may limit the dynamic range of colors; on the other hand, gold creates the effect of a "wonderfully rich color."

Fusager also uses a method called counter enameling, putting enamel on the back as well as the front of the plate, so that more layers of enamel can be applied without cracking. When enamel is heated, the glass hardens but the metal keeps contracting and can cause the glass to crack; putting glass enamel on both sides relieves the tension.

It was the range of colors as well as the play of light on color that attracted Frank to work with transparent enamel. As a designer, he often uses crystals and opals because of the way the light bounces through them, and concentrates on the texturing of the patterns on the surface of the metal.

Frank, who works largely with cloisonné, uses single gemstones as distinct elements in some designs and as accents in others. For example, in his "hinge pendant series," the gemstone is a separate element connected by a hinge to the enamel. He works with amethyst, garnets, tanzanite, iolite, opal, diamonds, rubies, tourmaline, and ammonite, a Canadian fossil that looks like reddish-green opal. Prices for one of Frank's silver lines range from $100 to $400 and from $200 to $500 for one of his gold lines; he has also designed limited edition pieces for up to $3,500.

Costly, colorful stones are used to dramatic effect in de Vroomen's bold enamel designs, which retail from $2,000.

"Some necklaces go up to a quarter-million dollars, but not just because of the enamel. We happen to use very expensive gemstones," says de Vroomen. "A lot of jewelry decoration has crunchy sort of stuff; it's frilly. Ours has form and shape; it's strong."

The color of the enamel is always adjusted to complement the gemstone, and is often graduated within a piece. De Vroomen says he is particularly fond of tourmalines and often uses spessartite garnet and South Sea and Tahitian pearls; diamonds are used only to accentuate certain gemstones. Designs include both cloisonné and champleve enamel, in which the enamel is put directly on a gold surface which has been recessed and engraved with a pattern or texture underneath to add to the brightness and color of the enamel.

Stretching the Dollar

Aesthetics aside, setting colored stones in enamel also has a practical value: It would take thousands of dollars in colored gemstones to achieve the multiple colors available with enamel, says New York

Flower necklace/earrings with 24 ctw. pink tourmaline, 2.19 ctw. diamond, and hand-painted enamel leaves in 18K gold. Photo courtesy Robert Bruce Bielka.

designer Robert Bruce Bielka. "You can have a lot of colors [with enamel] you couldn't have in gemstones. You add color without the cost." Enamel has another advantage: It can be formed into shapes that would be "prohibitive" with colored stones.

Bielka uses gemstones as accents in his enamel jewelry lines. The Golden Bear Hugs Collection, which retails at $1,300, is a whimsical line of teddy bears with movable parts with tiny diamond accent flowers. He has also created two necklaces with enamel and pink tourmaline buds that retailed at $90,000.

At the lower end of the jewelry market, enamel and gems are a popular color combination. The enamel magnifies the color of the stones, giving customers "bigger perceived value," says Jean Lin, president of Spectragem in Atlanta, Georgia, a "volume-driven" company. "We use the enamel to enhance the look of the stones so it is a value piece."

Enamel jewelry has a "sophisticated and modern look" that appeals to women ages 18 to 35, the company's target customer for casual jewelry, Lin says. At Spectragem, the jewelry is basic hand-painted enamel, usually with a colored stone centerpiece and floral or filigree in silver or bezel along the side.

As with more costly jewelry, the rule is to match the enamel and the gemstone. For example, one silver cross design features a center amethyst set in dark amethyst-colored recessed enamel with a silver floral frame.

In conservative markets like Mansfield, Ohio, enamel jewelry sales have remained modest, says designer David Griffon of Miller's Jewelry. But he has taken the opportunity to work with enamel and gemstones, mostly diamonds and sometimes rubies. He recently designed a woman's ring using rubies in a leaf design on a basic flat surface enamel. He even applied enamel techniques to embellish a men's collegiate Ohio State ring, using brown enamel for the famous brown nut of the buckeye tree and green enamel for the leaf.

Whether designing a fabulously bold fashion piece or a college ring, enamel designers are united by their fascination with the play of light through colored enamel glass. It's a fascination that has lasted for thousands of years and motivates designers from London to Ohio and beyond.

"Absolutely, it's the color. That's why I do what I do. I love the combination of light and color . . . When it hits your eyeball, yum," says Fusager. "Sometimes I'll sit with a small earring, and I'm thrilled as the light shines back at me."