Country Life
Trending: The enamel-filling process of making Cloisonné. Credit: Alamy
Flamboyant and colourful, the best examples of cloisonné render flowers, fruits and dragons in a rainbow of multi-hued enamel on metal, enthuses Matthew Dennison.
Settlers from the Islamic world, travelling to the western Chinese province of Yunnan late in the 13th century, are most often credited with introducing to the Yuan dynasty a method of decorating metal vessels with coloured enamels. Acclaimed by Caroline Schulten, Sotheby’s European head of Chinese art, as ‘incredibly decorative, wonderfully colourful and even appealingly blingy’, this technique is known today as cloisonné.
‘It’s a very splendid, flamboyant decorative style, especially in the case of early Ming dyn-asty pieces, the colours of which are particularly vibrant,’ explains Dr Schulten, who attributes cloisonné’s perennial appeal for European and Chinese collectors to a combination of polychr