Enamel is a vitreous glaze of various colours fused to the surface of gold, silver, copper, and other substances. The art of enamelling, which is of great antiquity, was practised by the Assyrians and by the Egyptians, from whom it may have passed into Greece, and thence into Rome and its provinces, including Great Britain, where various Roman antiquities with enamelled ornamentation have been discovered. The enamelled gold cup given by King John to the corporation of Lynn, in Norfolk, proves that the art was known among the Normans. The Byzantines of the 10th century produced excellent cloisonne enamels on a gold base, the cloisonne process consisting in tracing the design in fillets of gold upon the gold plate and filling up the small moulds thus formed with enamels the design appearing in coloured enamels separated by thin gold partitions or cloisons. In some cases, however, the enamels were filled into hollows beaten out in the gold plate, which formed part of the field.
In the 12th century the town of Limoges acquired the high reputation for inlaid enamels which it held until the 14th century, aud re-acquired in the 16th for its painted enamels. The costliness of the sculptured ground had led the Italians early in the 14th century to substitute the practice of incising the design on the face of the plate, and then covering it with a transparent enamel. The further step, which made the Limousin workshops famous, consisted in the method of superficial enamelling, in which opaque colours or colours laid on a white opaque ground were used. The Limoges school degenerated greatly in the 17th century, but its method with certain modifications in detail is still employed.
The basis of all kinds of enamel is a perfectly transparent and fusibleglass, which is rendered either semitransparent or opaque by the admixture of metallic oxides. White enamels are composed by melting the oxide of tin with glass, and adding a small quantity of manganese or phosphate of calcium to increase the brilliancy of the colour. The addition of the oxide of lead, or antimony, or oxide of silver, produces a yellow enamel. Reds are formed by copper, and by an intermixture of the oxides of gold and iron. Greens, violets, and blues are formed from the oxides of copper, cobalt, and iron.
In the middle of the 18th century enamelling was largely applied to the decoration of snuff-boxes, tea-canisters, candlesticks, and other small articles. Of later years it was extensively applied to the coating of iron vessels for domestic purposes, the protection of the insides of baths, cisterns, and boilers, and the like. Enamelling in colours upon iron was common, iron plates being thus treated by means of various mixtures, and words and designs of various kinds being permanently fixed upon them by stencilling, for advertising, signboards, etc.
The Morey Letter was a letter published in a New Yorknewspaper in 1880, near the end of the Garfieldcampaign, purporting to have been written by Garfield to H. L. Morey, Employers' Union, Lynn, Massachusetts. It expressed sympathy with capital rather than labour. It was proved to be a forgery. Research Morey Letter
Charles Burney was an English composer and writer on music. He was born in 1726 and died in 1814. He studied under Dr. Arne, and soon obtained a reputation for his musical pieces. While organist at Lynn Regis he commenced his General History of Music. He wrote also several other valuable works. His second daughter, Frances Burney (Madame d'Arblay), published a memoir of her father. Research Charles Burney
Eliza Lynn Linton was an English novelist. She was born in 1822 at Keswick and died in 1898. Her early novels were severely criticised, but later novels proved very popular as did her column in the 'Saturday Review' entitled 'The Girl of the Period'. Research Eliza Linton
John Capgrave was an English historian. He was born in 1393 at Lynn, Norfolk and died in 1464. Most of his life was passed in the Augustinian friary of his native place. He was one of the most learned men of his day, and wrote numerous commentaries, sermons, and lives of the saints. His most important work was his Chronicle of England, in English, extending from the creation to the year 1417. Other works were a Liber de Illustribus Henricis and a Life of St Katherine. Research John Capgrave
Madame D'Arblay (born Frances Burney) was an English writer. She was born in 1752 at Lynn-Regis in Norfolk and died in 1840. She was the second daughter of Dr Burney, author of the History of Music. In 1786 she was appointed one of the keepers of the robes to Queen Charlotte; in 1793 married the Count D'Arblay, a French emigrant artillery officer, with whom she afterwards went to France, and who, on the restoration of the Bourbons, attained the rank of general. She gained considerable celebrity by her literary productions. These were mostly novels, of which she produced four: Evelina, Cecilia, Camilla, and the Wanderer. She published the memoirs of her father, which appeared in 1832, and her Diary, edited by her niece, was also published. Research Madame D'Arblay
One of the greatest British, statesmen Robert Walpole sought to bring the court and the House of Commons into a working alliance to unite the nation under the new dynasty by keeping as free as possible from foreign alliances, and to make the nation prosperous, and he may be said to have succeeded in these aims. At the same time he was described as a crass and unrefined man and allegations of corruption for his own political benefit were made against him. Research Robert Walpole
Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe Canning was an English diplomatist. He was born in 1788 and died in 1880. The son of a London merchant and cousin of George Canning, he entered the diplomatic service in 1807, and in 1820 became plenipotentiary at Washington. In 1824 he went as ambassador extraordinary to St Petersburg, and afterwards to Constantinople (Istanbul) about the Greek difficulty; but negotiations were broken off by the battle of Navarino. He was sent again to Constantinople in 1831, and to Spain in 1832, and from 1834 to 1841 sat in parliament for King's Lynn. In 1842 he became ambassador at Constantinople, a post held by him for sixteen years under varying ministries with high honour. In 1852 he was raised to the peerage, and in 1869 created knight of the Garter.
He retired from diplomatic work in 1858, but exercised no small influence in the House of Lords, and as late as 1880 drew up a paper on the Greek claims. He died in the August of that year, having done more than any one man to establish British prestige in the East. Research Stratford Canning
Abbreviations
Research Morey Letter
