Pill Box Baroque Shaped With Pastoral Miniature Sterling Silver Salimbeni

Pill Box Baroque shaped with pastoral miniature Sterling Silver Salimbeni .Baroque shaped pill-box with hand engravings and green fire enamel, with hand painted enameled miniature of pastoral style in the center. Size cm. 4,6 x 5,6 x 1,6. Weight gr. 65. Produced in Florence in the Salimbeni company headquarters since 1998 in various specimens also in different colors and miniatures with completely manual execution by artisan artists with a thick plate suitable for withstanding numerous enamelled firings at about 800 ° C. Fire enameled miniatures:On a first layer of enamel generally white or very clear or even transparent suitably liquefied at a temperature of about 750 ° C, the chosen subject is painted using miniature colors which are as many colored crystals, ground and reduced to a very fine, almost impalpable powder washed and purified in distilled water with the addition of small quantities of deoxidizing acids which, diluted with essential oils (usually essential oil of solder), can be mixed to form a palette of colors.With very fine sable hair brushes you draw the subject starting from the perimeter and then gradually adding various layers of color.It is necessary to carry out various firings very often so that the colors harden and are not absorbed by the underlying glaze as, during the subsequent firings at 750 ° C, during liquefaction, it would spread irremediably. Hence the need to form the painting a little at a time, cooking it numerous times.Therefore it is necessary to proceed with numerous retouching, often overlapping different colors that only the painter's experience knows. A beautiful miniature needs from 20 to over 50 firings and is finished when the painter deems he does not have to further intervene.Some colors must have darker tones than others because then, by superimposing the transparent enamel placed at the end of the miniature, they fade. This transparent layer, called “fondant” in jargon, must be smoothed and polished like all other translucent enamel colors.