GLau[Patek Moderator]
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Hello All, This post is part 2 of 2 of my GTG with Anita Porchet, aka Enamel Queen 👸!
Jun 09, 2023,18:25 PM
Following the first post ( www.watchprosite.com
  which provides interesting tidbits about certain references and enamel techniques, this one talks about Anita’s personal journey and selected milestone pieces that she worked on for various brands.
When she was 12, Anita started to perform horological enamel work with her godfather who was an engraver and also into enameling. Till 15, she worked on base layer to understand the trade, and thereafter she moved on to try miniature painting and learned about how different colors would appear at different temperatures.
As a teenager, she painted an enamel piece and gave it as a gift to her mother, who must have been proud but had no idea how important her daughter would become. What do you think of this piece Anita (as a teenager) painted and gifted it to her mother ? ☝️
By 18, she moved away and attended art school to learn about drawings for 4 years. While there, she met Ms. Elisabeth Juillerat, an enamel school teacher who took Anita under her wing and taught her about enamel techniques on a part time basis. After school hours, she would design and work on enamel dials. On the weekends, she would bring them back to her god-father's atelier to put the dials in the kiln to finish producing them. During these years, Anita learned and honed her enameling techniques with cloisonne, champleve and miniature painting.
Although her passion was enamelling, such work was not available upon graduation and she worked as an art teacher full time for a number of years. Undeterred, Anita continued working on enamel dials as her hobby outside of work. She enjoys the serine environment of a work-shop and the opportunity to listen to music while "working" as she attains inner-calm. When her daughter was born in 1992, she stopped teaching and opened up an atelier in her home, and that is when her calling for the enamel profession started.
Jobs came slowly in the beginning to mid 90s with lesser known brands. Her first gig was to produce an enamel painting of a boat on one pocket watch for an independent brand. The next project from Jaquet-Droz involving two pocket watches requiring paillonne enamelling which was last used by the brand in 1780s. This two pocket watches took two year to make ! Anita had to research the paillonne technique to understand it, find the appropriate materials/supplies from and work with other craftsmen, and perform by trial and error to perfect the tasks.
Two of these paillonne dials☝️took two years !!!
Most intriguing work came later with Patek having her create a unique cloisonné dial based on a photo from a VIP for a motif of his male pigeon that won a beauty contest ! Given her excellent work, Patek gave her another assignment, a unique cloisonné dial for the same VIP but for his female pigeon that won a beauty contest after the male ! I asked if the two pigeons looked the same, and Anita said they had different colors.🤣
She also worked on the painting of the globe for the Ulysse Tellurium 👇
Other brands such as Hermes and Chanel came calling and she would advise which techniques would work best for the motifs the brands wished to display. Recently with the minute repeater AP manufacturer for the Code 11.59, she was provided with the artistic freedom to create whatever motifs she felt most appropriate👇
In her journey, in addition to her god-father, two special friends made a big difference in support and friendship. First is her enamel teacher Ms Juillerat who helped Anita with the different techniques. The second is Ms Suzanne Rohr (who worked with Philip Stern on many unique miniature painting pieces that are now displayed in Patek museum). They met each other via Ms Juillerat and became good friends. They would show each other their work and sharing experiences. After knowing each other for over a decade, in around 2011, Suzanne became Anita's mentor and thereafter Anita's techniques for miniature paintings escalated even more. Anita eventually became known as THE top in the world for such work.
Ms Suzanne Rohr on the left and Ms Elisabeth Juillerat on the left
Below are two practice pieces that Anita did to hone her skills. They look plenty good as “training” pieces !
The most challenging and fun piece for the Enamel Queen 👸 is the dial with three different techniques (champleve, paillonne and miniature painting) for “Judith” by Gustav Klimt.
Again, it was an honor to have the GTG with Anita to understand more about her love for enameling. What do you think of her journey and dials that she made ?