What Is Guilloché Enamel?

Guilloché enamel is translucent enamel applied over a metal surface that has first been engraved by machine with a fine, precise, repeating geometric pattern, allowing the engraved pattern beneath to show through the enamel and catch light as the piece moves.

What Guilloché Enamel Is Structurally

The distinguishing feature of guilloché enamel is the ground beneath it. Before any enamel is applied, the metal surface - typically gold or silver - is cut with a closely repeating pattern of fine lines, waves, sunbursts, moiré or basketweave textures. The pattern is produced on an engine-turning lathe rather than by hand engraving, which gives it a regularity that would be very difficult to achieve by hand. Translucent enamel is then fired over this ground, and because the enamel is transparent, the pattern remains visible through it, producing a shimmer and depth of colour as light catches the ridges and grooves at different angles.

The Engine-Turning Lathe

Two machines were used, both worked by hand rather than by power:

• The rose engine. The workpiece is mounted on a headstock that rocks or slides as it turns, guided by a rubber (a follower) running against a set of shaped cams called rosettes. The rocking movement makes a fixed cutter trace wavy, scalloped or petal-like lines. By shifting the work slightly between each cut, the turner builds up overlapping lines into sunbursts, barleycorn, and flinqué (fine radiating or wavy) patterns.
• The straight-line engine (in French, ligne droite). The work moves in a straight line past the cutter, guided by a pattern bar, to produce parallel waves, moiré and basketweave patterns on flat surfaces.

Ornamental turning on lathes of this kind developed at European courts in the 16th and 17th centuries, where princes practised it as a pastime. By the late 18th century engine-turning was used commercially on gold boxes and watch cases, and Abraham-Louis Breguet used engine-turned dials on his watches from the 1780s. The origin of the word “guilloché” is uncertain; it is often said to come from the name of a French inventor called Guillot, but this is not established.

How the Enamel Was Applied

The enameller laid finely ground translucent enamel over the turned surface in thin coats, firing each one in a kiln. Several firings were usually needed to build up a level, even layer, and the final surface was ground flat and fire-polished or hand-polished. Translucent enamel shows any variation in thickness as a change in colour, so the layer over the high and low points of the pattern had to be controlled carefully.

Enamellers often added further decoration within the layers: tiny cut-out gold-foil motifs called paillons, painted dendrites or sprays of flowers, or a final layer of clear enamel known as fondant over painted work. Fabergé’s workshops also used an opalescent white enamel, sometimes called “oyster” enamel, that shows changing pink and green tones.

Guilloché Enamel Versus Cloisonné and Champlevé

Plain enamel is generally applied over a flat or simply textured surface. Cloisonné uses soldered wire to form small compartments filled with different colours, and champlevé uses recesses cut into solid metal. Both rely on physical cell walls to separate areas of colour. Guilloché enamel has no cells - a single colour of translucent enamel is usually fired over the whole engine-turned surface, and the visual interest comes from the pattern showing through.

Fabergé

The House of Fabergé in St Petersburg is the firm most closely linked to the technique. Peter Carl Fabergé took over his father’s business in 1872, and the firm’s enamelled cigarette cases, frames, clocks, parasol handles and Imperial Easter eggs (made for the Russian imperial family from 1885 to 1916) used translucent enamel over engine-turned grounds in a very wide range of colours. Fabergé’s work was produced by semi-independent workmasters who signed with their own initials alongside the firm’s mark, among them Michael Perchin, head workmaster until 1903, and his successor Henrik Wigström. Fabergé opened a London branch in 1903, which made the firm’s enamelled objects familiar to Edwardian society.

Other Makers and Later Use

Guilloché enamel was used throughout the Belle Époque and Edwardian period, typically in pale blues, pinks, greens, lilacs and white, and it was not exclusive to Fabergé:

• Paris. Cartier and other leading Paris houses used guilloché enamel on clocks, cigarette cases, vanity cases and small jewels in the 1900s-1920s.
• Britain. Edwardian jewellers used it for lockets, pendants, bar brooches and watch cases, often with a small diamond or seed-pearl motif set on top of the enamel. In the 1920s and 1930s Birmingham silversmiths produced large quantities of guilloché-enamelled silver for dressing-table sets, compacts and cigarette cases, and the technique moved from luxury to middle-market goods.
• Norway. Firms such as David Andersen and J. Tostrup in Oslo (then Christiania) used guilloché enamel on silver-gilt brooches, spoons and small objects in the early 20th century.
• Switzerland. Geneva’s watch-case and enamelling trades used guilloché grounds throughout the 19th century.

How to Recognise It

Look for a fine, closely repeating geometric pattern visible beneath a smooth, glossy, translucent enamel surface, with the colour appearing to shift in depth or tone as the piece is tilted. A flat, opaque, evenly coloured enamel surface with no pattern beneath indicates plain enamelwork; visible wire outlines or carved cell walls indicate cloisonné or champlevé. Damage to guilloché enamel is hard to repair invisibly, and later repairs are sometimes made with coloured resin rather than fired enamel, which tends to look softer and less glassy than the surrounding surface.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is guilloché a type of enamel, or a type of engraving? Strictly, “guilloché” refers to the engine-turned pattern itself, which can be left bare or covered with translucent enamel; “guilloché enamel” refers to the combination of the two, which is how the term is most often used for jewellery.

Was guilloché enamel only used by Fabergé? No - Fabergé is the best-known name, but guilloché enamel was produced by many goldsmiths and jewellers, particularly in Russia, France, Britain, Switzerland and Scandinavia.