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Vitrum Annulare, Pastes

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370
VITRUM ANNULARE.
face to be ornamented, upon which it is finally fixed by means of fusion. From the degree of heat necessary in the operation, the substratum must be either fine gold or pure copper, capable of resisting it, otherwise the fine compartments formed in the metal to contain the enamel would run, and the outlines of the pattern be deranged. The basis of all ancient enamels, for which Medi­eval writers give many recipes, is powdered glass or flint, oxide of lead, and borax, mixed in various proportions, and coloured by different metallic oxides. It was a Celtic invention, made to replace the ΑίθοκόΧλ,ητα, or inlaid gem-work of the Orientals, by a cheap and attainable imitation in the baser materials of glass and copper. This we learn from a passage in that pretty piece of Philostratus, the Imagines, or ' Picture Gallery,' where he is describing the Boar-hunt (xxvii.) :—" The horses have gilt bits, and their head-ornaments are likewise gilt and diversified with colours. These colours, it is said, the barbarous nations (of the West) dwelling upon the ocean pour into the copper when red-hot, so that they become like a stone when congealed, and retain the position traced out for them." An ambiguous account of the process, which shows how little was known about it in Borne at the time he wrote, the reign of Severns. But in Britain the art had been carried to perfection by this time, as is attested by the remarkable incense-burner—its surface covered with a tasteful floriation in red and blue—found with the other relics in the tomb-vault of one of the Bartlow hills. Abundance of fibulae, similarly decorated and of British origin, are to be seen in collections. All these are done by the champ-levé process : that is, the patterns have been cut out to a considerable depth in the metal, and these beds filled up with the fused enamel, afterwards polished down to a smooth face. Such was the mode in use throughout the Middle Ages, as the innumerable reliquaries, coffrets, and tablets of French and German manufacture, suffi­ciently testify. But the Byzantine jewellers took it up and ap­plied it to gold, inventing the cloisonne method, more exactly imitating the old ΧιθοκοΚΚητα, each colour being contained in its distinct compartment of thin gold-plate set on edge upon and soldered down to a stouter basis, the thin lines of the gold serving as the outlines of the whole design, which is often a
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