84 
House & Garden 
A bayberry can¬ 
dle, to work its 
legendary charm, 
must “burn to the 
socket.” Atlantic 
Bayberry Candles 
—hand-dipped and 
having the real 
bayberry color and 
scent—burn to the 
very wick’s end. 
Packed, two in a 
box, in special 
Christmas pack¬ 
age, as illustrated. 
Burn 
Bayberry 
"A Bayberry Candle, 
Burned to the Socket, 
Brings Luck to the House, 
Food to the Larder 
And Gold to the Pocket." 
Candles at Christmas 
TX/'HAT could be more expressive of the Christ- 
* ' mas spirit than the lighted bayberry candle 
in the window? Not only is this charming custom 
more widely observed than ever, but throughout 
the year Fashion has decreed candles a decorative 
and illuminating necessity. 
For beauty and soft, changing radiance—for 
making everything and every one appear to the 
best advantage—for dignity, refinement, elegance 
—no light can compare with that from good candles. 
Good candles! Yes, that is important. Ask 
definitely for ATLANTIC Candles. They are 
masterpieces of the craftsman’s art and the candle- 
maker’s skill. Pure in materials, deep-set in color¬ 
ings, correct in design; free-burning, flickerless, 
dripless, smokeless and odorless. 
There are Atlantic Candles in sizes, shapes and 
shades for every use, room and decorative scheme. 
To assure you the genuine, Atlantic Candles, or 
their boxes, are labeled. Sold wherever decorative 
furnishings, gifts and art wares are purchasable. 
“Candle Glow,” a most useful illustrated booklet on candle 
styles and their decorative and illuminating possibilities, 
is available and vsill be mailed free for the asking. 
ATLANTIC 
CANDLES 
THE ATLANTIC REFINING COMPANY, Philadelphia 
Battersea Enamels 
(Continued from page 48) 
this it was an easy step to the suggestion 
of Basse-taille enamels. These earlv 
enamel-workers were long balked in their 
attempts to find a method of making 
enamel adhere to thin plates of metal. 
At first they found that only thick metal 
objects would hold the fired enamel for 
any length of time; invariably it dropped 
off the thin plates. Then came the dis¬ 
covery that if the metal object was coated 
at the back as well as on the front, and 
with enamel of the same composition, it 
would adhere all round on the thin as well 
as on the thick metal objects. Nearly all 
the 16 th Century enamelers, like the 
famous Limoges workers in painted 
enamels, employed this counter-enamel 
process. Its seems strange that although 
the glass-producing state of Venice in¬ 
vented painted enameling, the Italians 
did not produce much painted enamel 
work or appear to be greatly interested in 
it; instead they left the process to the 
French enamelers to perfect. 
French enamel-workers covered the 
thin metal plates of the objects to be 
enameled with a coating of white enamel 
for the front, the back coating being of 
the same quality so both would cool 
evenly and at the same time when re¬ 
moved from the oven. In the early French 
work various designs, many of them 
after engravings by Albrecht Diirer and 
other graphic artists of the time, were 
copied by the enamel artists on the white 
surfaces in outline, the highlights being 
left open and the shadows filled in by 
lining and the whole touched up with 
color and fired in. This sort of decoration 
greatly resembled the manner of the 
miniatures in the illuminated manu¬ 
scripts of the period, though the color in 
the work was more limited in range. 
When the French painted enamels of 
Limoges began to deteriorate, the grow¬ 
ing French love for jewelry turned to the 
employment of tinted enamels, and the 
jeweler Toutin of Chateaudun and his 
followers developed the art of painting 
miniature portraits in enamel for various 
settings. This soon became popular 
throughout Europe and the ateliers of the 
miniature enamel-workers in Paris, Lon¬ 
don, Dresden and Geneva were soon 
working to capacity. Jean Petitot, an 
enamel-worker of Geneva who had been 
forced to flee from Geneva to escape perse¬ 
cution, and who had made his way to 
Paris, soon took place at the head of the 
workers in enamel in the French capitol. 
Later Charles I invited him to visit Eng¬ 
land. There, with the help of Van Dyck 
and of Turquet de Mayenne, who was 
the King’s chemist and physician, Petitot 
advanced his art. Another continental 
enamel-worker was also invited to Lon¬ 
don,—Jacques Bordier, who remained in 
England for some time after the execution 
of Charles, though his compatriot Petitot 
lied to Paris. From this time onward the 
line of English and of Irish miniature 
painters in enamel was long and dis¬ 
tinguished. 
Throughout the latter half of the 18 th 
Century r the French enamel-workers 
turned out great quantities of small ob¬ 
jects such as snuffboxes, etuis, carnets du 
bal, bonbonnieres, etc., and the fashion for 
these objects was carried to England 
where it took firm root, really maintaining 
beyond the French period, since the 
Revolution in France had driven out of 
that country those products tending to 
suggest luxury. With the French Empire 
snuff-taking went out of fashion and 
decorative art busied itself with other 
things to the neglect of the art of painted 
enamel. Dresden and Geneva, on the 
other hand, clung to painted enamels 
and kept the art living to the present day. 
In England Stephen Janssen estab¬ 
lished an atelier for the production of 
painted enamel work at York House, in 
Battersea, a borough in the southwest of 
London, bounded on the north by the 
River Thames and on the northeast by 
Lambeth. Cunynghame says of the 
many" pieces here fabricated: “All were 
pretty, but hardly one possessed real ar¬ 
tistic merit.” This is, I think an exagger¬ 
ation, for many of the Battersea products 
are very lovely" indeed. Horace Walpole 
was an admirer of the Battersea enamels, 
and there is a letter from him extant, 
written in 1755 to accompany the gift of a 
Battersea enamel snuffbox sent to his 
friend, Richard Bently. 
The Battersea enamels were laid on a 
copper base and had a soft white enamel 
ground to receive the painted decoration. 
There is a high glaze on these old Batter¬ 
sea pieces, an indication that lead played 
an important part in their composition. 
The range of objects was large, including, 
in addition to those already" mentioned, 
card-cases, toilette boxes, tray r s, candle¬ 
sticks, buttons, knobs, handles, bottle 
labels, mustard boxes, salt cellars, jewel¬ 
ry" medallions, cane heads, nutmeg 
graters, stoppers, etc. 
Many' of these old Battersea enamels 
were decorated by the transfer printing 
process which Dr. Wall had employed in 
the decoration of the old Worcester ware 
of his period. In this the design, usually 
pictorial and copied from some print, was 
engraved on a metal plate and transferred 
to the white enameled surface of the ob¬ 
ject to be decorated by contact printing. 
These designs were usually" printed in 
black or in sepia. Mottoes, sentiments 
and verses often accompanied them. 
Indeed, the Battersea souvenirs ap¬ 
pear to have been precursors of the candy- 
hearts of the 19 th Century! 
Battersea enamels fall into three gen¬ 
eral groups: ( 1 ) Those decorated after 
the manner of the china-painters and hav¬ 
ing designs inspired by" the keramic deco¬ 
rators of Dresden and of Sevres; ( 2 ) Pieces 
with printed decoration, as described 
above; ( 3 ) Pieces whose decoration sug¬ 
gests the colored engravings of the late 
18 th Century. 
In color the snuffboxes and the toil¬ 
ette boxes of Battersea enamel generally- 
had grounds of pink or blue, laid on the 
white base enamel. Nearly always these 
were finished with gilt or gold scrollwork 
and foliate ornament. Cunynghame say's 
of the majority of the Battersea imita¬ 
tions of French enameled objects (and of 
course these were naturally" greatly in 
vogue): “The execution is bad, the 
knowledge inferior to the French, and yet 
somehow, in spite of rude drawing and 
bad color, one feels in presence of a better 
art than the French,—more original and 
more independent.” I think this is true, 
and that it is one of the things that lends 
charm to old Battersea enamels. Though 
often copyists, the old Battersea enamel 
decorators were not slavish in their copy¬ 
ing and they employed a freedom in their 
method that deserves far more praise than 
writers on English enamels have gener¬ 
ally seemed willing to concede. 
The Dresden bonbonnieres in animal 
forms were popular with the Battersea 
enamelers who were continually seeking 
for novelties, and they" adapted Dresden 
ideas to their own service in turning out 
the quaint boxes in the forms of birds 
and beasts. In old Battersea pieces of all 
sorts, one often meets with a shade of 
pink that is peculiar to the 18 th Century 
Battersea pieces, although the color has 
been imitated by" 19 th Century" enamelers 
with almost complete success. 
It is, of course, the dainty charm and 
quaintness of the old Battersea enamels 
which appeals to the taste of to-day. 
They- have a naive quality- all their own 
which compensates for their missing 
that perfection found in the French 18 th 
Century enamels, that supreme elegance 
and external grace. To place the painted 
enamel of old Battersea beside the 
painted enamel of old France is like 
placing the rustic beside the exquisite; but 
the rustic is as interesting as the other, 
only" in his own manner. 
