...is the absolutely awesome delicacy of the wirework on these beads.
How many of us could take a fine pair of tweezers and bend hair-thin strips of copper into tiny, tiny little shapes and then manage to somehow arrange them in a pleasing pattern on the surface of a tiny little round ball?
Then these tiny wire shapes had to be filled with enamel powder, which takes a very deft touch to not spill outside the outlines...then briefly put into a kiln until just the right temperature was reached [ever peered into a hot kiln? could you gauge temperature by eye?], then ground down by hand with a series of pieces of abrasive rocks,not a lathe, then re-filled with more enamel powder, then ground down... then re-filled, then ground down...steps repeated until all the colors were present and at a level above the wires, then the final grinding and hand polishing.
Most of us couldn't draw these tiny designs with a pencil.
Pic is of an artist hero. The link is a fascinating read.
Examining your beads, some display a translucent/transparent green enamel and a better polish. Could these be examples of enamels developed after the German chemist Gottfried Wagener worked with Japanese factories to broaden their enamel repertoire?
from the Victoria & Albert:
... the Ahrens Company in Tokyo. Ahrens was one of many companies set up under the Meiji government’s programme whereby western specialists were invited to help modernise Japan’s existing industries.
The chief technologist of Ahrens, which had exhibited one of Kaisuke’s works at the Vienna Exhibition [1873], was the German chemist Gottfried Wagener who introduced modern European enamelling technology to Japan.
In 1878 Wagener moved to Kyoto where he met the former samurai and cloisonné artist Namikawa Yasuyuki (1845-1927). Yasuyuki began his career around 1868 and worked with the Kyoto Cloisonné Company from 1871 to 1874.
Hi Chris,
Thank you for finding and sharing this article
on the history of beautiful Japanese cloisonné.
Just Fred
