Enamel Jewellery: Types, Durability and How to Care for It
Enamel on jewellery is glass. Not paint, not lacquer, not coloured coating: powdered glass fused onto metal in a kiln. The V&A describes enamelling as a technique in which coloured glass is fused to a metal base in the heat of a kiln to create glossy, vividly coloured metal objects. Once you know that, everything else about enamel jewellery follows: why the colour never fades, why it chips instead of scratching, and why a sudden temperature change is the thing most likely to ruin it.
How Hot, and Why It Matters
Thompson Enamel, a manufacturer of the material, states that enamel bonds to a copper surface at 1450 degrees F, about 788 degrees C. That firing is what turns loose powder into a solid glass skin locked to the metal.
Two consequences come out of that. The colour is in the glass itself, so it cannot fade the way a pigment does, and a finished enamel surface has been through a thermal cycle far more violent than anything it will meet again. What it has not been made resistant to is a fast temperature change while cold and already under stress from years of wear.
The Techniques, and What Each One Looks Like
The names describe how the coloured areas are separated from each other.
- Cloisonné. From the French for partitions. The V&A describes fixing very fine silver or gold wire to the surface of a metal object to create defined sections into which different coloured enamels will be fired. You can see the wire outlines between colours, which is the easiest identifier.
- Champlevé. Literally raised field. Here cells or sunken fields are formed by carving or etching recesses into the surface of the metal itself, with no added wire. The V&A's account of the medieval technique describes beds dug out of a copper plate to receive the powdered enamel.
- Plique-à-jour. French for letting in daylight. The enamel is translucent, allows light to pass through, and is backless. IOM3 puts the structural point well: the enamel is the structure of the piece, a shell supported within the network of metal cells. It is the most fragile enamel work there is, and the most beautiful lit from behind.
- Basse-taille. Translating as shallow cut, this is a design carved, engraved, stamped or engine-turned into metal, then covered with translucent enamel, so the pattern reads through the colour.
- Guilloché. The engine-turned version of the above. The American Institute for Conservation describes guilloché as a form of mechanical decorative engraving whose patterns are produced on a rose engine or straight-line machine. This is the shimmering wave pattern under Fabergé enamel.
- Painted or Limoges enamel. The V&A explains that powdered glass and metal oxides are mixed with oil to make a thin paste, painted colour by colour onto a metal base, with a kiln firing after each layer.
Real Enamel or Resin: A Test You Can Do With a Pin
A great deal of what is sold as enamel jewellery is coloured epoxy resin, sometimes called cold enamel, poured rather than fired. It can look convincing in a photograph. There is a simple physical test, published by KC Enamels: hold a straight pin vertically and tap the surface. If it skips off, it is enamel, which is glass. If the surface feels tacky, it is resin. You can scratch resin with a pin; you cannot scratch true enamel.
The durability difference is real, though we are not going to attach a number to it, because no credible source measures the gap. Glass and cured epoxy age differently: resin can yellow and dull with UV exposure over time, while fired enamel is glass and does not fade under ultraviolet light. If a piece is described as enamel and the price seems low for the work involved, the pin test settles it.
How Tough Is It, Really
Vitreous enamel is scratch resistant at 5 to 6 on the Mohs scale, which puts it in the same neighbourhood as a mineralogist's glass reference plate at 5.5. That is softer than quartz at 7, so ordinary household dust will dull an enamel surface over years the same way it dulls an opal.
Scratching is not the main failure mode though. Enamel fails by chipping and cracking, because it is a rigid glass layer bonded to a metal that flexes. Squeeze a thin enamelled band while pulling it off a swollen finger and the metal moves slightly while the glass cannot. Our guide to gemstone hardness and care covers the same distinction between hardness and toughness for stones.
Care: Temperature Is the Real Enemy
The Canadian Conservation Institute's guidance on ceramics and glass is the most directly useful published advice, since enamel is glass. CCI advises to avoid temperature extremes, particularly rapid temperature changes, because that causes expansion and contraction which may result in breaking or cracking, and never to heat glass or leave it in a sunny place or under spotlights where it might become very warm.
CCI also explains why a small problem becomes a big one: because glass is a homogeneous mixture with no internal boundaries or discontinuities, cracks in glass tend to spread. A hairline crack in enamel does not stay hairline.
For cleaning, CCI's method applies directly: water temperature should be lukewarm or cooler, do not use detergents, air-dry very slowly, and never use heat to reduce drying time. In practice that means a barely damp soft cloth, a dry cloth after, and time.
On ultrasonic cleaners we want to be straight with you. We could not find a museum or conservation body that names ultrasonics as harmful to enamel specifically. The advice to keep enamel out of them is common in retail, and the physics CCI describes about thermal shock and spreading cracks gives good reason for caution, since ultrasonic baths are usually run warm. Our own practice at the bench is to hand-clean enamel and never put it in the tank. Treat that as our working policy rather than a documented standard.
Living With an Enamel Piece
- Put it on last, after perfume, hairspray and lotion.
- Take it off before swimming, hot tubs, saunas and washing up in hot water. The temperature swing is the risk, more than the water.
- Store it in its own compartment. Anything above 6 on the Mohs scale will mark it, which is most stones.
- Do not leave it on a sunny windowsill or under a hot lamp.
- Get a chip looked at rather than left. Cracks in glass spread, and enamel restoration is specialist work that gets harder as the damage grows.
If you like colour in jewellery but want something more forgiving of daily knocks, coloured gemstones are the sturdier route.
Colourful Pieces From the Shop
These are current pendants from our Coquitlam range.
Key Takeaways
- Enamel is powdered glass fused to metal, bonding to copper at about 788°C. The colour is in the glass, so it does not fade.
- Cloisonné uses added wire cells; champlevé carves cells into the metal itself.
- Plique-à-jour has no backing, so the enamel is the structure. It is the most fragile technique.
- A pin skips off real enamel and scratches resin. That is the field test.
- CCI warns that rapid temperature change cracks glass, and that cracks in glass spread. Lukewarm water, no detergent, slow air-drying.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can I tell real enamel from resin or cold enamel?
Use a straight pin held vertically and tap the coloured surface gently. Real vitreous enamel is glass, so the pin skips off a hard surface and will not scratch it. Resin, sometimes sold as cold enamel, feels slightly tacky under the pin and can be scratched with it. The test comes from KC Enamels and it is reliable because it tests a physical property rather than an appearance. There are visual clues too: fired enamel has a genuine glassy depth and a very slightly uneven surface where it flowed in the kiln, while poured resin tends to sit dead flat with a plastic-looking meniscus at the edges. Given fired enamel involves kiln work at around 788°C, a suspiciously low price is itself a signal.
Can enamel jewellery go in an ultrasonic cleaner?
Our practice at the bench is no, and we clean enamel by hand instead. We should be honest about the evidence though: we could not find a museum or conservation body that names ultrasonic cleaners as harmful to enamel specifically, so treat the blanket prohibition you see in retail as a cautious convention rather than a documented standard. What is well documented is the underlying physics. The Canadian Conservation Institute warns that rapid temperature change causes expansion and contraction that may crack glass, and that cracks in glass tend to spread because glass has no internal boundaries to stop them. Ultrasonic baths are usually run warm, and enamel on an older piece is already under stress. Hand cleaning costs nothing and risks nothing.
Will the colour in enamel jewellery fade over time?
The colour itself will not fade, because it is not a pigment sitting on the surface. Vitreous enamel is coloured glass fused to the metal, and glass does not fade under ultraviolet light the way paint or dye does. This is the main practical advantage enamel has over resin, which can yellow and dull with sun exposure. What does change over years is the surface: enamel sits at roughly 5 to 6 on the Mohs scale, softer than the quartz in ordinary household dust at 7, so the gloss gradually dulls with abrasion. That surface dulling can often be polished back by a specialist. Chips and cracks are the damage that genuinely matters.
What should I do if my enamel ring chips?
Have it looked at sooner rather than later, and stop wearing it in the meantime. The Canadian Conservation Institute explains that cracks in glass tend to spread, because glass is homogeneous with no internal boundaries to arrest a crack, so a small chip on an enamel piece is genuinely likely to grow with continued flexing and knocks. Enamel restoration is specialist work: it usually means removing the damaged enamel and re-firing, which puts the whole piece back through kiln temperatures and carries risk to any stones and to the surrounding enamel. That work gets harder and more expensive the more area is affected. Bring it in and let someone assess whether restoration or stabilising the existing damage is the better call.
Sources
- Canadian Conservation Institute, CCI Notes 5/1, "Care of Ceramics and Glass"
- Victoria and Albert Museum, "A guide to metalworking techniques"
- Victoria and Albert Museum, "How was it made? Champlevé enamelling"
- Victoria and Albert Museum, "Objects of beauty: Art Nouveau glass and jewellery"
- Thompson Enamel, "Enameling Help and Information"
- American Institute for Conservation, Cox & Lindow, "Looking at Guilloché in Conservation"
- IOM3, "A concise history of enamel"
- KC Enamels, "Vitreous Enamel vs Resin: how to tell the difference"
Sources retrieved August 2026. Where we could not find a documented standard, as with ultrasonic cleaning of enamel, we have said so in the text rather than implying one exists. If something here is out of date by the time you're reading it, let us know, we keep our guides current as the trade changes.
Visit Vanhess
Bring an enamel piece to our Coquitlam bench and we will tell you honestly whether a chip can be restored or is better stabilised as it is. See our jewellery care guide, or call (604) 653-6449.
