Enameling is the process of fusing glass to metal. Fine glass powder can be fused to steel (your stove top and old bathtubs and sinks), to gold, copper and to Fine Silver. Once the metal formed, ground, filed and heated, to burn off the thin oil coating it comes with, has been scoured and pickled, the piece is brushed with a natural gum and the fine powdered enamel is sprinkled carefully over the entire area. This is set in a warm spot (usually on top of the enamel kiln) to dry, then put into the kiln at about 1500 degrees F for several minutes, or torched with an oxy-acetylene torch where the glass melts and fuses to the copper.

On most pieces this is done on both sides of the piece to prevent cracking and is repeated so that two, three or even four layers of enamel are applied. Once the enameled leaves and flowers are ready to become part of the fountain, they are welded to the stem, treated to add verdigris to the exposed copper, or not, depending on the design, and the stem is inserted into the water feature, fountain, cat fountain or indoor water garden and attached to the pump by a tube.

The images below show the fundamentals of this process of enameling. Once the piece is shaped, filed, heated, pickled, and scrubbed, then:



Here a piece is being heated in the kiln, resting on a trivet.

ENAMELING – Introduction to the Art And Science of Enameling

Enamels are (usually powdered) glass which when heated to about 1500 degrees F become vitreous – that is, the particles soften and flow together to form a unified, non-crystalline material.

Ancient artisans (Egyptian, Greek, Celtic) often used enamels in place of precious gemstones because of the many beautiful colors and the rich, glossy surfaces and forms they produced. The earliest colors were used to replicate specific gems such as cobalt for lapis, opaque blue-green for turquoise and reds for carnelian or garnets. Later many more colors were added such that now a wide range of bold and subtle hues are available in both opaque and transparent form.

Powdered enamels and the variety of other necessary materials and tools for working with enamel can be purchased today from a variety of sources and there are a number of societies and associations created around the working with enamel as an art form. And a high art from it is, though curiously, it seems to come and go out of favor, at times enjoying a deep respect and appreciation and at others seems hardly recognized. Mention the word enamel today and most people think of paint.


Paint, it is not. Enamel is specially formulated glass designed to adhere to certain metals. It can be fused to copper, fine silver (not sterling), gold and steel. Which enamel is used on which metal is dependent on several factors. One is the temperature the enamel begin to flow (its softening point). Another is the rate or speed at which it flows at a particular temperature, called fusion flow. Also important is the coefficient of expansion, which is a measure of how much the material will expand during heating. These factors together determine the ‘fit’ of the particular enamel to a given metal.

Fortunately, all this has been figured out by the makers of enamel and they sell enamel suitable for a specific metal. I, for example, purchase enamel specially formulated to work well with copper. It begins to flow at a low enough temperature so that I don’t melt the copper (easy to do), it flows fast enough for the same reason and it doesn’t expand too much or too little in relation to the expansion/contraction of the copper, thus preventing cracking, should one expand significantly more than the other, then shrink during cooling.
To understand this last point, imagine putting on a coat that seems to fit, then finding that the coat shrinks around you, creating stress areas that turn into splits in the material. More on enameling in our next bulletin.

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