This tea caddy spoon has been made using multicoloured translucent enamels, a technique known as plique-à-jour. Due to the difficulty of fusing the coloured enamels into the spaces of the wire framework, plique-à-jour has a high failure rate but when successful, the technique produces an effect similar to stained glass. Plique-à-jour was popular in France during the 1860s and in Norway at the turn of the 20th century. This example was made by the firm David Andersen, established in Oslo in 1876. It was Arthur Andersen, Andersen’s son and the firm’s director from 1901, who introduced the plique-à-jour technique to the company’s designs.
