The Collaborative International Dictionary
Limoges \Li*moges"\ (l[-e]*m[=o]zh"), prop. n.
A city of Southern France.
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A variety of fine porcelain manufactured at Limoges[1]; also called Limoges ware or Limoges China. Limoges enamel, a kind of enamel ware in which the enamel is applied to the whole surface of a metal plaque, vase, or the like, and painted in enamel colors. The art was brought to a high degree of perfection in Limoges in the 16th century. Limoges ware.
Articles decorated with Limoges enamel.
Articles of porcelain, etc., manufactured at Limoges.
Wikipedia
Limoges enamel was produced at Limoges, France, already the most famous, but not the most high quality [reference ?], European center of vitreous enamel production by the 12th century; its works were known as Opus de Limogia or Labor Limogiae. Limoges became famous for champlevé enamels, producing on a large scale, and then from the 15th century retained its lead by switching to painted enamel, often in grisaille, on flat metal plaques or vessels of many forms.
Champlevé plaques and " chasse caskets" or reliquaries were eventually almost mass-produced and affordable by parish churches and the gentry. However the highest quality champlevé work came from the Mosan Valley, and later the basse-taille enamellers of Paris led the top end of the market. The industry was already in decline by 1370, when the brutal sack of the city after the Siege of Limoges by the English, led by Edward the Black Prince, effectively ended it. From the late 15th century Limoges enamel revived, now in "painted enamel" on thin flat copper surfaces, and in the French Renaissance was the leading centre, with several dynastic workshops, who often signed or punchmarked their work.
Limoges enamel was usually applied on a copper base, but also sometimes on silver or gold. Preservation is often excellent due to the toughness of the material employed, and the cheaper Limoges works on copper have survived at a far greater rate than courtly work on precious metals.
Some of the early Limoges enamel pieces display a band in pseudo-Kufic script, which "was a recurrent ornamental feature in Limoges and had long been adopted in Aquitaine".
Usage examples of "limoges enamel".
It embraced a black-figured amphora by Amasis, a proto-Corinthian vase in the Aegean style, Koubatcha and Rhodian plates, Athenian pottery, a sixteenth-century Italian holywater stoup of rock crystal, pewter of the Tudor period (several pieces bearing the double-rose hallmark), a bronze plaque by Cellini, a triptych of Limoges enamel, a Spanish retable of an altarpiece by Vallfogona, several Etruscan bronzes, an Indian Greco Buddhist, a statuette of the Goddess Kuan Yin from the Ming Dynasty, a number of very fine Renaissance woodcuts, and several specimens of Byzantine, Carolingian, and early French ivory carvings.