Japanese Maple Leaf Plique a Jour Footed Bowl

• Maple - Maple, native to North America, is a dense heavy timber from light to yellow-brown in colour. It has very little distincive graining unless it is one of the variants such as birds-eye maple or burr maple, so was not used extensively for furniture in 18th and 19th century, where cabinetmakers and designers preferred timbers with more distinctive features such as mahogany, walnut, rosewood and oak.
  
  Birds-eye maple has a seres of small spots linked by undulating lines in the grain, is highly sough and is used as a decorative veneer. Burr maple has larger and irregular grain swirls than birds-eye maple.
• Plique-A-Jour - Plique a jour, which translates from the French as ?glimpse of daylight? is a method of enamelling in which the backing is removed or cut away so the light shines through, with a similar effect to a stained glass window. The enamel is held in place by border.
  
  Although the technique of plique-a-jour has been known and in use since the 6th century, it became popular again in the late 19th century, in Russia and Scandinavia. Plique-a-jour was popular in the Art Nouveau period, especially for jewellery.
  
  Because of the length of time required to produce an item, and the high failure rate, production was limited, and the technique is little used today.

This item has been included into following indexes:

• Chinese silver - bowls and baskets 581
• Japanese silver - bowls 57
• plique a jour - jewellery and objects 94