It just so happens that the pandemic has become the main trend setter of the current season. Yes, yes, it is to her that we owe many styles and trends that have emerged recently. One of them is multi-colored jewelry decorated with enamel that blew up the jewelry market with bright colors, designed to somehow distract us from the gray monotony of quarantine everyday life. Everything you need to know about enamel jewelry - from production technology to outfits with which to wear them - in our material.
Hommage to the era of the 80s
Being for a long time within four walls with a mood of monochrome shades, you only want one thing - freedom ... spiritual and physical. Perhaps that is why the rebellious spirit, audacity and brightness of 80s-style jewelry have become one of the leading trends of the season. Focus on the most vibrant, flirty jewelry in unusual color schemes and hit neon hues from that era.
The combination of local colors, laconic shapes, simple geometry and obvious gigantomania (the larger the jewelry is in size, the better) is the most trendy. Multicolored jewelry is the main condition for the spring-summer season and is an excellent chromotherapy for those who are so lacking in rainbow emotions.
Jewelry enamel - what is it and how?
Initially, the main function of jewelry enamel was protection. Such a coating protected the metal from the effects of the environment - moisture, sun, deformation ... In general, enamel is a low-melting glass of a complex composition, intended for fusion onto a metal base. The complex composition of such a coating is necessary for its strong connection with the base material. In terms of chemical composition, enamels are salts of silicic acid, and the components of the alloy are oxides of silicon, potassium, barium, sodium, etc. and oxides of coloring metals.
Technique and process of enameling
The technology of applying enamel has been known since the time of ancient Egypt, but the intricacies of working with it and the methods of preparing enamel compositions have always been kept secret. Nothing has changed even today - the enameling technologies of large jewelry brands possessing enamel mastery at the highest level, for example, the Austrian jewelry House Freywille, are kept "secret".
There are three techniques for applying enamel: champlevé (applied into the recesses made in the decoration), cloisonné (applied in the space between artificially created partitions made of flat wire or filigree) and pictorial (art painting with overglaze paints). The third type is especially laborious and requires high professional training and artistic taste from the master.
First, fats and oxides are removed from the surface of the product, then they are covered with enamel with a brush or spatula, and then they are fired or polymerized in an oven.
What types of enamel are there?
By type, enamel is divided into hot and cold. Hot enamelling technology is more laborious than cold enameling. During this process, the decoration is fired in an oven under the influence of a temperature of the order of 700 to 900 ° C! However, the process is not fast. That is why some manufacturers prefer the cold technique, which allows you to achieve an even distribution of enamel over the surface of the jewelry literally in a day. To speed up the process, it is enough to place the product in an oven for several hours at a temperature of about 90-120 ° C.
However, today there is a growing demand for UV-curable cold enamels, which by their nature are a UV-curable polymer, akin to those used in dentistry for fillings. Such enamel coatings polymerize under the influence of UV radiation and, depending on the properties, the polymerization rate can be from several hours to several minutes or even seconds. Such enamels are easy to use, but at the same time they are high-tech. The enamel coating obtained by this method is plastic, rarely chipping, easy to repair. And the defects of such coatings that appear are quite simply eliminated.
How to care for enamel jewelry?
Enamel jewelry, as well as glass products, should be handled with care - do not expose them to strong mechanical and chemical influences and do not store in direct sunlight, under the influence of which the color of the coating may fade and become faded. The best place for enameled items is in a beautiful jewelry box.
What to wear with enamel jewelry
Nowadays, against the backdrop of global automation of production, a great interest in hand-made jewelry is again beginning to show, and enameling is a jewelry technique, the application of which is done exclusively by hand, which means that each such jewelry is unique in its own way.
Jewelry with enamel in the new season will become bright accents of the wardrobe, the main thing is to correctly form the desired image, for example, by wearing bright enamel earrings and rings in the same style for a white basic T-shirt or oversize shirt complete with loose-fitting jeans.
By the way, if you are still not a big fan of too bright jewelry, take a closer look at products with white, black or neutral gray enamel. They look incredibly authentic and fit almost any style and fashionable look: from street to business or evening.
