The lower front of this box shows Christ in Majesty surrounded by saints. ‘Champlevé’ literally means ‘raised field’, but in fact the field surrounding the enamel stays where it is and the enamelled portions of it are lowered, but that is nit-picking, the result is the same. When it has cooled and solidified, the whole surface is then polished flat. In this, indentations are either carefully cut or cast into the surface of the object, and the edges of these indentations define the containers that hold the enamel where it is designed to stay. It was made in Limoges, France, around 1180-90AD, and it used the champlevé process. This beautiful gilded box is a reliquary – a container for relics of a saint, possibly a bone or two, or even a piece of cloth. There are two basic techniques for making sure the enamel stays where it is intended to be, and as the medieval French were particularly good at enamel work, these methods are known by their French names, ‘champlevé’, and ‘cloisonné’. While the enamel is in a molten state, it needs to be confined to a designed area, or it will spread in unpredictable ways. In decorative enamel work, coloured vitreous enamel is put onto the surface area to be decorated and then fired until the enamel melts and fuses, both with itself and the object’s surface.
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