In 1997 Te Papa purchased approximately one thousand silversmiths’ and jewellers’ tools from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Jeweller Norris Blaxall started the collection in the early 1920s and his son Kevan continued to assemble and document it. Jessa Roylands, a Museum Studies student at Victoria University of Wellington, has been researching the tools, and shares some insights into the process of creating beautiful, glossy enamelled jewellery.
Glossy discs and magical little bottles
As I trawled the seemingly endless objects of the Blaxall collection, as part of my work as an intern at Te Papa, I kept coming across certain items that intrigued me. While reading wonderful descriptions of brightly coloured, glossy discs and mysterious powders kept in magical little bottles I came to wonder what these objects were doing here in this collection, with all these rusty old tools? I became curious to know more about enamel and the tools and techniques used to work it.
What is Enamel?
Enamel has a much longer history than you would expect. The oldest objects made of enamel were found in Greece and date to 1425 BC. After this, enamel quickly spread throughout the Mediterranean with examples being found throughout Egypt, Cyprus, and Assyria.
Enamel is coloured glass in a powdered form, and usually consists of a compound of flint or sand, red lead, and soda or potash – which is salt with potassium in it. More lead and potash in the mixture makes enamel more vibrant but physically softer. A softer enamel requires less heat to work making it much more convenient to use, but it doesn’t wear as well.
The Blaxall collection contains twenty jars of enamel powder in various shades including red, pink, purple, orange, brown, blue, green, black, and white; which were once used by local Wellington silversmiths to create vibrant and colourful works of art.
The process of enamelling
Enamel can be applied to metal as a powder or as a paste – where the powder is mixed with water and tree gum. Enamel can adhere to a wide variety of metals, but copper, silver, and gold are the best because of their smooth metallic grain.
Once applied to a piece of metal, the enamel is fired in a furnace at incredibly high temperatures (think 500-900 degrees Celsius!) and the enamel will spread out to cover the entire surface of the metal.
Tools of the trade
The Blaxall collection contains several of the tools used in the enamelling process. These are all from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but some of these types of tools are still used by jewellers today.
A mortar and pestle was an essential set of tools for grinding hard enamel ‘cakes’ into powder. Agate mortar and pestle sets, such as this one, have a highly polished surface that is good for grinding medium and hard substances, and as such they were used to grind high purity powders like enamel, which flows more smoothly the more finely it is ground.
Gum arabic is the hardened gum of Acacia trees and was used as a binding agent, adhesive, and polish. It is tree gum like this that would be added to enamel powder to make it a workable paste.
Gravers were used in enamelling to score the surface of the base metal, allowing the enamel powder to hold better than it would on a smooth surface. The graver was used by holding the metal blade between the thumb and forefinger with the wooden handle cupped in the palm of the right hand. The left hand would be holding whatever was being worked on a soft surface. The blade was guided by the thumb and pressure was provided by the palm.
To stop the enamel from flowing away into the furnace, jewellers would beat troughs into or solder metal wire to their designs to contain the spread of the enamel. They used materials like this silver solder to permanently attach multiple pieces of metal together forming a boundary out of cut pieces of wire.
Borax was a material used in soldering to keep metal from being discoloured by flame. Jewellers did this by painting the surface of the metal with Borax before the flame was applied, keeping the piece nice and shiny afterwards.
This type of blowpipe was used in soldering. The way this was done was by blowing air through the thin tube, directing airflow through a flame to produce a small, super-hot jet of heat that would melt pieces of metal together. The work being soldered was held by tweezers or tongs on the opposite side of the flame.
Pickle dishes were used in enamelling to wash objects in water or acid before further work could be done on them. They were often used to wash off Borax after soldering and to clean other tools and materials which had to be kept absolutely clean by regular washing in spirits or acid. Otherwise, specks would be present in the finished enamel.
Mayer & Kean Limited
Mayer & Kean Limited were a local Wellington jewellery making business. They advertised themselves as specialists in gold, silver, and metal enamelled badges. They were established in 1912 and had their shop premises located at 6 Willis Street. The two founders of the business were Henry Gustav Mayer (1876–1945) and Francis Douglas Kean (1886–1947). Te Papa has collected over 140 items that once belonged to them, including some of their enamelled badges.
In 1964, they became Mayer and Toye Limited and were acquired in 2020 by Tribe Design.
View the Silversmithing collection on Collections Online or view some of the tools on display in the Passports exhibition on Level 4.
View the objects associated with Mayer & Kean on Collections Online.
Texts and sources
- Day, Lewis F. 1907. Enamelling, a comparative account of the development and practice of the art. B.T. Batsford, London
- Maryon, Herbert. 1912. Metalwork and Enamelling. Chapman and Hall, London
- Rossi, Stefano; Russo, Francesca; Compagnoni, Attilio Monzio. 2020. A brief history of porcelain enamel: from artistic enamel to technical enamelling. ELETTRONICO, pp. 1–8
- Tait, Hugh. 2022. “enamelwork”. Encyclopedia Britannica
- Wilson, H. 1912. The artistic craft series of technical handbooks: Silverwork and Jewellery. John Hogg, London
