This post is part of a series, Reading Time at HSNY, written by our librarians. Today’s post was written by Miranda Marraccini.

What comes to mind when you think of enamel? Perhaps, like me, you harbor a vague sense that the word somehow connects molars, nail polish, and cookware, but you aren’t quite sure. Perhaps you’re one of the several Reddit users to have wondered, with palpable alarm, “Are pins made of teeth?” The answer, you’ll be relieved to hear, is no. Enamel, the word, can refer to any durable, glossy surface, or the technique of applying such a coating, and the word is popularly applied liberally (unlike actual enamel, which is applied with precision). Enamel in the context of decorative arts, including watches, usually refers narrowly to vitreous enamel.

There are a lot of layers to vitreous enamel, in both senses. I found a useful explanation of the technique in “About Time: a Children’s Guide to the History and Science of Time,” a recent addition to our library at the Horological Society of New York. Though written for a younger audience, the book’s illustrations and text are some of the most colorful and useful of our recently published materials. As the book explains, “vitreous enamel is glass that has been ground to a fine powder. This powder is mixed with water so it can be painted on the metal, or left dry and dusted on like powdered sugar on a cake.”

The enamel is then fired in a kiln to melt it and fuse it to the metal surface below, which can be made of copper, silver, or other materials. This technique creates a colored stratum that “never fades,” as the book explains (image 1). Ancient enameled pieces still shine like precious gems, which was kind of the whole idea.

In “The Antique Enamelled Watch,” Milton Lewis waxes poetic about the technique. “Glass and enamel happen to be a form of material which more than any other substance…shows man’s thought, ingenuity and his creative art and passion.” He points out that glass, though fragile, is uniquely multidimensional, “an all-encompassing material that opens up the vista of the whole world.” Lewis traces the history of enamel all the way back to ancient Egyptian pottery, and from there to the Greeks and Romans who used it as a substitute for jewels. This might be a simplification, because the history of enamel is certainly long and varied, and it didn’t develop in the isolation of a single kiln.

Enamel certainly existed for centuries before portable watches. Yet as much as I’d like to continue to ramble about the history of the art form, we’re here to talk watches. In the realm of watches, both in the pocket and on the wrist, enamel most often adorns the caseback and the dial, where artists squeeze a lot of detail onto a constrained surface. A number of volumes in our library cover enameled dials. For the dial enthusiasts, however, there’s no book that compares to Dr. Helmut Crott’s magnum opus, Le Cadran (image 2 from the book shows the raw materials of enameling and explains some of the steps involved).

Crott explains that the earliest wearable watches (starting around the end of the 16th century) typically featured engraved decorations. Later, in the 17th century, enamel dials appeared, initially in the champlevé style, in which an artist carves into the metal surface, then fills in the cavity with enamel (somehow we ended up back at teeth!). Image 3 shows a champlevé watch from around 1600, with some engraved details. In cloisonné enamel, an artist attaches thin metal strips or wires to the dial blank, creating tiny partitions. Within each of these cells, the artist applies colored enamels. It can be combined with the champlevé technique in different configurations.

Artists from the 18th century onwards created incredibly detailed miniature enamel paintings on dials and cases, especially in Geneva. Image 4, from “Le Cadran,” shows an enamel miniature after a painting called “The Daughters of Sir Thomas Frankland,” a touching domestic scene signed by a Genevan artist around 1815. Although some artists chose classical or biblical subjects, many patrons wanted to memorialize or pay tribute to those they loved in enamel. Later practitioners even used innovative techniques to enamel photographs onto dials (see image 5).

There are too many dazzling dials to include here, but I’ve photographed a few here from another book in our library, “Email-Uhren,” by Alfred Leiter and Dr. Alma Helfrich-Dorner (“Email” means enamel in German). Image 6 shows an unsigned enameled watch, made around 1780 in Geneva. The photorealism of the rose on the caseback is incredible, even without considering the trickiness of the medium.

Image 7 is a gold watch on a chatelaine that also includes a key, a case of dance cards, a tiny shoe and, incredibly, a miniature dominoes set. At the top of the chatelaine there’s a tiny enamel portrait bust, as well as translucent enamel over the engine-turned surface on the watch case and key. If you enjoy this interesting object, you may also like my previous article about form watches, many of which use enamel to convey, for instance, the bright gleam of a ripe cherry, or the dour expression of a sheep at rest.

In the 18th century, the “classic” enamel dial, made of solid, single-color opaque enamel, came into vogue. These are the kind of dials that come with big names: Berthoud, Breguet. The high-contrast simplicity defined a stripped-back aesthetic for the dial that could be combined with opulent decoration elsewhere, or left bare. An image from “Le Cadran” (image 8) shows the process of enameling Roman numerals on a dial. The numbers are carefully traced, then filled in with enamel paint. The enameler then uses precise pointed tools to remove excess enamel, and a fine sable brush to add the last details. Finally, they bake the whole dial in a kiln. This simple Roman style endured through the age of the pocket watch and only faded in popularity after the wristwatch achieved market dominance.

On the opposite end from these black-and-white understated dials are the engine-turned and enameled trinkets of the late 19th and 20th centuries. Amazingly (but potentially not surprisingly to dedicated readers), our library contains a book specifically treating enamel and guilloché silver boxes–not two separate categories, but rather boxes decorated with a type of translucent enamel over a guilloché metal background.

Tiny, gorgeous boxes could be used for many purposes, most famously storing snuff, but also sealing wax, candy, or beauty patches (a kind of artificial beauty mark made of fabric). A “boîte” such as those in images 9, 10, and 11 was, according to authors Jean-Yves Godechoux and Sophie de Bernis, a popular gift starting in the 18th century: a luxury item for the sake of luxury, a diplomatic gift, and of course a showpiece for the jeweler or goldsmith who created it.

The boxes are stunning candyland fantasies, not to be overlooked as portable examples of miniaturized artisanship. Yet they are, admittedly, not watches. Though I’ve focused on historical examples, enameling today is a thriving art form used in watchmaking around the world. A number of current manufacturers feature enamel dials, most of them understated. Major brands like Jaeger-LeCoultre, Patek Philippe, H. Moser & Cie, and Vacheron Constantin have also used enamel to ornament limited editions of their watches with precious, wearable art, even within the past two years (this article features some of them).

Many of the distinct enameling techniques I’ve mentioned are still being used and combined on dials. Atelier Wen produced a watch with grand feu enamel over a hammered silver dial. In a 2025 collaboration, master enameler Xiong Songtao offered vibrant cloisonné renderings of “four plants (the plum blossom, the orchid, the bamboo, and the chrysanthemum) often depicted in Chinese traditional bird-and-flower paintings.” I personally enjoy this dial from Hong Kong-based brand Selten that mimics the crosshatching on a bamboo steamer basket used to make dim sum.

At our library at HSNY, I recently had the pleasure of meeting Allison Moriarty, a watchmaker who enamels dials in her studio in the middle of what she characterized as “a field” in Ireland. According to a 2025 New York Times article, Moriarty “uses two basic enamel techniques: a dry sift, adding layers of enamel grains to the dial before firing, and a wet pack, in which as many as five layers of grains are painted onto the dial, each one fired for a minute or two before the next is added.”

Brittany Nicole Cox, an antiquarian horologist who has taught guilloché for our students at HSNY, also teaches enameling with her team at Memoria Technica in Seattle. Cox has given multiple lectures at HSNY, but her 2023 talk about restoring a mechanical bird box touched particularly on enamel work used in feathery automata. Just last year, Lewis Heath, Founder and Designer of the brand anOrdain, also gave a talk at HSNY about the brand’s enamel dials. Heath covered different enameling techniques in detail with gorgeous examples of each.

Today, as in the 18th century, enamel artisans hone their craft over decades. They painstakingly apply layers of tiny particles, all while holding the awareness that enameling comes with a substantial failure rate. Bubbles or imperfections on the surface can ruin an almost-completed piece. Hours, days, even weeks of work can melt away in the hot kiln. Maybe this sounds sentimental, but learning about enameling has reminded me that anything worthwhile takes time to perfect. There’s a lot of luck involved, too. All we can do is slowly build up the strata of our lives, layer by layer, grain by grain, and hope that it all comes together as we’ve designed. And if not, well–begin again.

Reading Time at HSNY: Through the Melting Glass

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