Sterling silver box with enamel painted scene

Compact French Sterling Silver Box with Enamel Design This exquisite French sterling silver box features a rectangular shape with curved edges and a distinctive clasp. The exterior s...

French sterling silver vanity with enamel design This French sterling silver vanity features an oval cartouche shape with scalloped edges. The top lid is decorated with a hand-painte...

Art Nouveau Sterling Silver Decorative Box This sterling silver decorative box features an oval shape with elaborate edges. The lid is decorated with an intricate enamel floral desig...

Sterling Silver Box with Enamel Design This square-shaped box with chamfered corners is made of 800-thousandths pure silver and features an enamel design and gold plating. The lid fe...

This antique box is signed by an unknown maker, but presumed to have originated from the UAE and date to approximately 1920 and done in the period Bessarabian style. The box is compo...

Box shaped enamel is in 925/1000 sterling. Box shaped enamel has handpainted fired enamels miniature. Box shaped enamel is engraved and fire-enamelled ornaments. Box shaped enamel is...

Rectangular table box with rounded corners in gold-plated 925/1000 sterling silver with very fine hand-engraving, also on the sides, of peacocks with “ramage” similar to tiger tails,...

Square box in 925/1000 sterling silver gold plated with translucent fired enamel on guillochè also on the sides. In the center, a beautiful hand painted tempera miniature on a vegetable ivory plate depicting the portrait of a 19th century lady, signed by the painter Anna Maria Manfriani. Dimensions cm. 12 x 12 x 2.5. Weight gr. 618. Designed by Franco Salimbeni in 1976 and manufactured in Florence in some specimens with various subjects and different colors, in the headquarters of the Salimbeni Company with completely manual execution by artisan artists with thick slab and large reinforcements suitable for withstanding numerous enamelled firings at about 800° C. Miniature is a very ancient technique which consists of painting works in small proportions. It was born for the decoration of the first letter of the paragraph of the books. Over the years, however, this technique is refined and enriched, then moving on to precious personal items. Hand painted miniatures can be done with multiple different techniques. The most important that we use on our articles are of three kinds: 1) Fire enamel. 2) Water tempera on an ivory plate. 3) Painted on mother-of-pearl. Fire enameled miniatures: On a first layer of enamel generally white or very clear or even transparent suitably liquefied at a temperature of about 750 ° C, the chosen subject is painted using miniature colors which are as many colored crystals, ground and reduced to a very fine, almost impalpable powder washed and purified in distilled water with the addition of small quantities of deoxidizing acids which, diluted with essential oils (usually essential oil of solder), can be mixed to form a palette of colors. With very fine sable hair brushes you draw the subject starting from the perimeter and then gradually adding various layers of color. It is necessary to carry out various firings very often so that the colors harden and are not absorbed by the underlying glaze as, during the subsequent firings at 750 ° C, during liquefaction, it would spread irremediably. Hence the need to form the painting a little at a time, cooking it numerous times. Therefore it is necessary to proceed with numerous retouching, often overlapping different colors that only the painter's experience knows. A beautiful miniature needs from 20 to over 50 firings and is finished when the painter deems he does not have to further intervene. Some colors must have darker tones than others because then, by superimposing the transparent enamel placed at the end of the miniature, they fade. This transparent layer, called “fondant” in jargon, must be smoothed and polished like all other translucent enamel colors. The miniatures with water tempera colors are painted on real ivory...