Spring is in full swing, and we’re celebrating the riot of spring with these wonderful, colorful enamels. We also have a featured sale going on that includes most enamel items in the shop – have a look if you haven’t already.
One of our favorite decorative enamelists has always been Annemarie Davidson. Davidson made enamel giftware, bowls, plates and accessories from the 1950s up until near present. We’re still unclear on whether or not new items are being produced, but we don’t think so.
The older work by Davidson has been a favorite with mid-century modern homeowners, especially her bowls and plates that feature “jewels” in the center along with radiating lines toward the rim. The blue bowl shown above is a good example of this. You can still find these in thrift stores and flea markets if you look hard enough, especially here in Southern California.
Most of Davidson’s work that you’ll come across are bowls and plates – however, she did produce a number of other accessories and items, like the enameled covered box shown above. The box is made of wood and the enamel fits on top of the lid.
One of the most interesting things about decorative enamels is that a lot of times the designer or maker is a mystery. Like ceramics, many of these enamels were unmarked or had paper labels that were removed. Others are marked underglaze but it’s either cryptic or unreadable. We come across a lot of these unknown enamels, but we still pick up a few depending on how they look.
The orange enamel bowl with red and yellow jewels shown above is actually marked with a name: “Boone Paul”. As of yet, we haven’t been able to find out anything about the maker, or whether or not he was known. We think he might have at least been more than a hobbyist, because of the sticker that seems to indicate he made more than one piece like this.
Another wonderful find was this small enamel dish marked “Le 68″. We found this one along with an honest to goodness Win Ng enamel (coming to the shop soon!) – so we were wondering if there might be any connection there. Perhaps a student or contemporary of Ng’s? The pattern of colors certainly looks reminiscient of some of the Ng enamels we’ve seen.
This textured enamel Reed and Barton bowl was an unusual find – the Reed & Barton name is well known and they still make metal bowls and accessories to this day. However, we haven’t seen the textured finish on this bowl too many times.
I know the focus here has been decorative enamels – we decided to talk about them a bit because less is generally known about them than with collectible enameled kitchenware. But if it’s enamel cookware you’re interested in, here’s a few examples. All of these are also on sale in the shop currently.
Actually, many of these kitchenware items are suitable for decorative use themselves, hint, hint.
OK, enough blather for today – if you’re looking for any enamel items and you don’t see them on the site, let us know. We’ve got a ton of items still waiting to get into the shop, so we might already have what you’re looking for.
