Salimbeni Enamel Frame with Border in Louis XV Empire Style

Salimbeni enamel frame. Our life is unique, our memories are precious but also a little naughty.

The Salimbeni enamel frame shows a familiar image full of love and happiness that can transform into feelings of sadness and nostalgia. For this reason we worked with colors and techniques in order to obtain a container of memories that was suitable for keeping only positive feelings alive and that were at the same time as precious as our memories are. Memories must not lose their contours. Memories are important and we don’t know it well, ours is an ancient and long-lived family and we want to be happy to remember it. The moments of our childhood, our loved ones, our loves, our past that allows us to be who we are today and so we have created enchanting frames, elegant unique pieces, Bridges over the rivers of memory. Salimbeni enamel frame in gold-plated 925/1000 silver with translucent fired enamel on guilloche and external edge with small enamelled leaves in Louis XV Empire style. External dimensions cm. 17.7 x 22.8 internal cm. 11.7×16.8. weight gr. 629. Designed by Giorgio Salimbeni in 1970, reproduced in a few examples in different colours, in the Salimbeni manufacture with manual workmanship by skilled craftsmen with thick sheet metal and large reinforcements suitable for supporting numerous high-heat enamel firings at around 800° C. Guilloché is an artisanal process carried out on mainly precious metals, which allows to obtain surfaces engraved with complex and repeated geometric patterns. Guilloche engraving was invented in the mid-1800s in Switzerland by watch manufacturers to embellish the dials of their luxury products. The technique consists of engraving the metal with a burin using a predominantly manual machine. (see photo in the gallery) A photocopier, following the sinuosity of some matrices placed on the machine, transmits a movement to the object subjected to engraving, thus ensuring that the burin “cuts” the metal. By moving the positions of the matrices and the photocopier, precise intertwined engravings of an almost infinite geometric type are obtained and their continuous differentiation certainly adds value to the objects that are produced. The skill required to carry out this operation is highly specialized, the existing machines are very ancient, as a mass market has never existed and above all for the conservation of art. After engraving, generally we proceed with fire enamelling, a meticulous and very long process during which the guilloche engraved surface is covered with various layers of colored glass powder and fired in small special ovens at a temperature between 700 and 800°C.