ART OF ENAMELLING

Southland Times, Issue 23376, 7 December 1937, Page 5

ART OF ENAMELLING

RARE AND BEAUTIFUL WORK Exquisite examples of a rare and beautiful art will be exhibited this week by Mrs Elsa Kingston, formerly well known in Invercargill as Miss Elsa Morrah, at Miss Campbell’s shop in the Arcade. Mrs Kingston spent several years in Paris and London studying the arts of enamelling and pottery and enjoyed a great deal of success at important art exhibitions abroad. At the end of a fairly long stay in Invercargill she is giving an opportunity for her work to be inspected before she returns to Europe early next year. Enamelling is a very old art, but modern artists have revived it and infused new interest into it by the adoptions of modern ideas of design and use of colour. Mrs Kingston’s work possesses remarkable qualities in the use of design and colour and the examples to be exhibited are of extreme beauty. Enamelling lends itself to the brilliant use of colours and Mrs Kingston has achieved a striking boldness which gives her work unusual beauty. Among the pieces is a number of examples of filigree work, which more than any other branch of enamelling requires infinite patience to complete. Leaving Invercargill some years ago to study music in Paris, Mrs Kingston was greatly attracted by enamelling and began to study the art. She quickly mastered the intricate processes of preparing and firing her materials and put into her work new and original ideas, which caused a number of pieces to be accepted at the Salon des Artists Decorateurs in Paris. This was followed by other successes and the purchase of one piece by the French Government.