Qianlong gold-ground repousse enamel ewer inlaid with painted enamel

This ewer refuses to choose one technique. Its gold body is worked in repousse, the design hammered up from behind, then filled with enamel, then inlaid with painted-enamel panels. Three crafts, one vessel, and the Qianlong mark at the end of it.

Repousse enamel, zhentai, builds relief instead of flat cells: the metal itself is the drawing, and the colour sits in the hollows. Painted enamel then adds fine pictures on top, figures and flowers brushed in like miniature painting.

Gold as the ground is the luxury that makes the rest possible. On copper, cloisonne reads as colour. On gold, the same enamel reads as jewellery, and the court knew the difference.

An object like this is less a vessel than a curriculum. It lists, in one held shape, everything the imperial workshop had learned to do with fire and metal.

Image © The Palace Museum. View the original in the Palace Museum collection.