Limoges enamel was produced at Limoges

Limoges

Limoges |Limousin]] dialect of Occitan) is a city and commune, the capital of the Haute-Vienne department and the administrative capital of the Limousin région in west-central France....

, France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, already the most famous, but not the most high quality, European center of vitreous enamel

Vitreous enamel

Vitreous enamel, also porcelain enamel in U.S. English, is a material made by fusing powdered glass to a substrate by firing, usually between 750 and 850 °C...

 production by the 12th century; its works were known as Opus de Limogia or Labor Limogiae. Limoges became famous for champlevé

Champlevé

Champlevé is an enamelling technique in the decorative arts, or an object made by that process, in which troughs or cells are carved or cast into the surface of a metal object, and filled with vitreous enamel. The piece is then fired until the enamel melts, and when cooled the surface of the object...

 enamels, producing on a large scale, and then from the 15th century retained its lead by switching to painted enamel, often in grisaille

Grisaille

Grisaille is a term for painting executed entirely in monochrome or near-monochrome, usually in shades of grey. It is particularly used in large decorative schemes in imitation of sculpture. Many grisailles in fact include a slightly wider colour range, like the Andrea del Sarto fresco...

, on flat metal plaques or vessels of many forms. Champlevé plaques and "chasse caskets

Chasse (casket)

A chasse or box reliquary is a shape commonly used in medieval metalwork for reliquaries and other containers. To the modern eye the form resembles a house, though a tomb or church was more the intention, with an oblong base, straight sides and two sloping top faces meeting at a central ridge,...

" 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

Mosan art

Mosan art is a regional style of art from the valley of the Meuse in present-day Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany. Although the term applies to art from this region from all periods, it generally refers to Romanesque art, with Mosan Romanesque architecture, stone carving, metalwork, enamelling...

, and later the basse-taille

Basse-taille

Basse-taille is an enamelling technique in which the artist creates a low-relief pattern in metal, usually silver or gold, by engraving or chasing. The entire pattern is created in such a way that its highest point is lower than the surrounding metal...

 enamellers of Paris led the top end of the market.

Limoges enamel was usually applied on a copper

Copper

Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...

 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

Pseudo-Kufic

Pseudo-Kufic, or Kufesque, also sometimes Pseudo-Arabic, refers to imitations of the Arabic Kufic script, or sometimes Arabic cursive script, made in a non-Arabic context, during the Middle-Ages or the Renaissance: "Imitations of Arabic in European art are often described as pseudo-Kufic, borrowing...

script, which "was a recurrent ornamental feature in Limoges and had long been adopted in Aquitaine".