About

Joséphine de Staël revives the ancient craft of vitreous enamel to create unique contemporary jewellery and objets d’art.

Joséphine has created two collections inspired by the perfume ‘Constantinople’. The first collection takes its inspiration from the iris scent of the perfume and features cloisonné enamel pendants and an elaborate iris brooch, cast in fine silver from a handcrafted wax model and enamelled. The second collection is inspired by Mary Wortley Montagu’s Turkish embassy letters and features Ottoman cloisonné designs.

Josephine‘s work uses the finest Japanese enamels and silver kumihimo thread.

Join Joséphine on 7 October at Penhaligon’s Wellington Street store to gain an insight into the magical world of enamel. Joséphine demonstrates the technique of forming cloisonné wire and enamelling a piece to reveal the work that goes into creating an enamel masterpiece. Having written her PhD at the Royal College of Art about training to become a jeweller in Paris, Joséphine shares her experience of acquiring the skills required to become a jeweller/enamel artist with the audience. She also sets the craft in a historical context and reveals the continual evolution behind this historic and global art form, drawing on her research as a design historian and her practical training in the historic centres of the craft in Georgia and Limoges.