| Cloisonné is a kind of high-class enamel craftwork. The unique craftsmanship that applies luxurious decorations on the surface of metal body with glaze was originally invented by the ancient Persians. The craft was introduced into China in Yuan Dynasty, and through the endeavors and research by the Chinese handicraftsman of the past dynasties, it is amalgamated with such traditional techniques and expressive forms as ceramics, copperware and lacquer ware etc. and infused with Chinese aesthetic mentality.
During the Jingtai Reign of Ming Dynasty, the art has attained superb artistic level in terms of shape, vein decoration and shade of color. Especially when blue glaze was used as the base color instead of the Persian style in color, the unique national artistic style was formed with clear and elegant color and luster presenting noble and superb artistic enjoyment to the people, thus the artwork is also called Jingtailan (Jingtai Blue).
Beijing as the birthplace of cloisonné has been the main producing area of cloisonné ware. Beijing cloisonné is renowned for its elegant and firm shape, heavy and complicated veins, clear and grand color creating a sumptuous and solid, golden, splendid and satin-like artistic taste, thus becoming a world famous artwork.
Cloisonné making process is quite delicate and complicated, which can be roughly divided into 6 procedures, i.e. body making, wiring, glazing, firing, polishing and gold gilding processes. Especially, the wiring process is the one that can best showcase the artistic talent of the craftsman and display the artistic feature and beauty of the craft of cloisonné ware. The craftsmen in wiring process just use a small pair of tweezers to turn the very thin copper wires by bending etc. into various zoetic artistic images like a magic.
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