Cloisonné vs Cloisonnism
七宝（クロワゾネ） / クロワゾニスム
Cloisonné comes from Vessel and Craft Techniques and Cloisonnism from Fin de Siècle Art. One is technique and the other style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Cloisonné
A technique of enamelling in which thin metal strips are laid on a metal or porcelain ground to form chambers, and vitreous enamel paste is packed into each chamber. The strips survive the firing as visible metal lines, so every area of colour stays closed inside a line. Getty files it under processes rather than styles.
Cloisonnism
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A manner of painting named after the partitions of cloisonné enamel: flat fields of colour enclosed by heavy contour lines. It brought the way of seeing of ukiyo-e prints and stained glass into oil painting, abandoning shaded volume in favour of colour laid down from memory. The technique that prepared the flatness of the poster.
| Cloisonné | Cloisonnism | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | ancient– | 1888–1895 |
| Family | Vessel and Craft Techniques | Fin de Siècle Art |
| Kind | Technique | Style |
| Cues | Every area of colour is fenced by a thin metal line, and the lines divide the whole design without a break / No two colours bleed into each other / Only the lines give back the light of metal rather than of glass / The ground is metal or porcelain, so the design wraps a curved vessel instead of sitting on a flat panel | Thick, dark contour lines / Flat colour fields without shading / Decoratively simplified shapes / Colouring drawn from memory |
| Best used for | Designing a multicolour version of a crest or a logo where colours are separated rather than blended · Building a diagram or a map in which the outline itself carries the ornament | Work built cell by cell in separate colours, like stained glass or tilework · Drawing a remembered landscape in simple shapes and colour rather than from life |
| Type | Enclose letters the way the design encloses colour. Avoid typefaces too fine to survive the width of the wire. | Set lettering outside the cells in black at the keyline weight, hand drawn or slab |
| Composition | Divide the entire field into closed cells, leaving no area outside a cell. The smallest cell is set by the width the line can hold. | Divide the picture into a few large cells, edge to edge, partitioned by heavy lines |
| Material | Fence with metal lines and fill each cell with a glassy colour. Keep the lines the colour of metal and never let one area of colour cross a line. | Flat unmodulated colour from memory inside dark contours, with no shadow or gradient |
| Caution | Drawing the lines as decoration without actually closing the cells lets colour escape and reduces the technique to a mere outline. | Adding heavy outlines afterwards produces no division of colour, only an ordinary picture inside lines. Letting shading or depth back into the cells breaks the enamel like flatness. |