Cloisonne, Vintage Round, Medium Blue with Pink "Flower Power", 12mm Sold Individually
SKU: ASM-714
Sale price
$1.25
Shipping calculated at checkout
Only 26 in stock
Description
- These beads are priced and sold individually
- Vintage cloisonne round beads, 12mm medium blue with pink flowers in the 1940s "Flower Power" style
- When I first saw the bold flowers on these beads, my mind went straight to the 1960s: Mary Quant, Twiggy, Carnaby Street, and Flower Power everywhere. It turns out though that this style is from the 1940s! They are part of a stash my sister Pat bought from a Chinatown retailer who was retiring.
- Though the word is French, cloisonné refers to a form of decorative art usually associated with China or Japan. It has been applied to boxes, vases, and beads.
- The second image shows the laborious steps use for making these beads
- The technique was widely used in China during the Ming (1368-1644) and Ching Dynasties (1644-1912).
- To make these beads2 cloisonné, copper wire is soldered to the beads raw copper surface to create tiny compartments, or cloisons. These are then filled with ground glass blended with metallic oxides to produce colorful enamels, then fired. The glass shrinks as it melts so this process has to be repeated several times, sometimes with additional colors blended in.
- After the enameling phase, the copper wires are gilded, and the object is polished multiple times with finer abrasives until perfectly smooth to the touch.
- On this website I distinguish between vintage cloisonné which is made as described above and Enamel which is a similar process, but with fewer steps and less fine finishing