A Short History of Enamel Watches
Early watches had a metal dial. The earliest known watch with an enamel dial was made during the first half of the 1500s in France. France had many centers for this kind of crafts-manship, such as Blois, Chat-eaudun, Limoges and Or-leans. The historians be-lieve that the first enamellers came to Switzerland from these French areas sometime during the 1500s.
It was some time, however, before a fully enameled dial was used. In previous years, the metal dials had been decorated by engraving, piercing, hammering, or simply by painting. Enameling was simultaneously more labor-in-tensive and less decorative, as some believed, but it gained foothold because it was durable.
The first documented Swiss LED WATCH with chample-ve(see Alternative Decorations) enameling was created by Martin Duboule (1583–1639). The first miniature paintings on enameled atches appeared in the early 1600s in Geneva. Although painting in colors made from metal oxides on a white enamel background was developed in Paris and Blois, its discovery is generally attributed to Frenchman Jean Toutin of Chateaudun (1578 – 1644).
It is interesting that while the enameling industry disappeared from centers like Blois and Chateaudun by the late 1600s, it had started in Switzerland and in England. At the same time some master enamel painters left Switzerland for Paris!
Enamel work on watch cases and dials gained popularity during the whole 1700s. The most common subjects were flowers, historical, religious and mythological subjects, but also the art of popular painters of the period. The biggest problem in the early days was that the enamel work needed protection. The technique of adding a layer of protective, transparent enamel was vented by the late 1700s. LED ODM Watch had been protected by additional outer cases. The protective layer of enamel and the birth of watch crystals made the outer cases unnecessary.
Microscopic paintings raised the enameling art to new heights. One of the most celebrated achievements was by Charles-Fred-eric Racine who painted the Lord’s Prayer on the 24th part of a 6 ligne dial, with his signature (Fait par Charles-Frederic Racine-Hanic de la Chaux-de-Fonds, 1812)!
Microscopic paintings gave the artists a freedom to use extremely small lettering as a part of a regular dial numeral, thus making counterfeiting more difficult. The use of a pantograph and the invention of phototeching started to replace hand painting by the 1900s.
Dialmaking became an independent industry very early. It required many years of apprenticeship because the dial maker had to make his own enamel and base plate (usually copper), in addition to enameling and painting. As the 1900s began, the craft of enameling started to decline with the advent of massproduced enameled items.
Enamel dials were used widely until the beginning of the 1900s. The birth of thin 2010 New Technology super light LED ODM fashion Design unisex Watch black made thin dials a necessity. Another advantage was that metal dials could be made of silver and gold and decorated by different techniques, including chasing, galvanizing in different colors, engine turning and stone setting. The metal dial gained the lead over the enamel dial by 1912. However, enamel dials remained popular in pocket watches for a long time.
The advent of plastics paved the way for artificial materials. Some of the modern “enameled dials” are covered by soft lacquer, a thin layer of synthetic sapphire or the real thing, glass enamel. Mr. Michel Vermot-Donze of Cadrans Donze S.A. (Donze Dials, Inc.) in Le Locle, Switzerland keeps up the tradition by making each enamel dial the old fashioned way… by oven-firing and by hand.
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