What are cloisonné emblems?
A. Many people refer to the enameled emblems as used on cars as cloisonné; but this is quite incorrect. Briefly, cloisonné (pronounced cloy´-soh-nay) refers to the type of jewelry that makes use of thin silver wires called cloisones to separate the various colors of enamel. No car emblem uses this technique. Instead, the copper base is either stamped, engraved or etched with a design that leaves individual compartments for color separation. This practice is called champlevé (pronounced shomp´-leh-vay). Many of these emblems use a translucent color over an interesting texture or design. This type of work is called guilloche (pronounced gie´-yoh-shay). So one might correctly call these enameled champlevé emblems, or enameled guilloche emblems, but never cloisonné. Ah, well, we ourselves use the term because most of our customers understand the idea that true hard fired vitreous enamel is used in them.
