Enamelled Tulip Brooch

This brooch is an enamelled painting of two tulips on a white background. 

Vitreous enamel, copper, silver.

6.00 x 3.7cm

The making process:

Look at the product images to see some of the process.

The tulips were growing in pots on my patio and I painted them on paper and then did the brooch design from that painting. The shape of the brooch was designed to complement the subject, scaling down the flowers and refining the shape.

Enamel painting is a painstaking process. First of all the base has to be prepared, in this case it was copper and it had two coats of enamel fired on each side, one side white the other black. Then very finely ground enamels were mixed with a painting medium and applied in very thin layers with a very fine brush on to the base coat, one colour at a time and fired in the kiln in between. There were at least 30 separate firings to make this piece. 

Once the enamelling was done a silver setting was made to surround the painting and to make it in to the brooch.