Hello All, This post is part 2 of 2 of my GTG with Anita Porchet, aka Enamel Queen 👸!
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.
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.
Two of these paillonne dials☝️took two years !!!
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.🤣 
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
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.
What an amazing post about…
You are welcome Mike ! Please
Fascinating journey that creates an even greater appreciation of her work and how she followed her passion for many years before receiving the recognition her work deserves.
Hi Patekova, She is an excellent enamelist and a great
Hopefully I will meet her at the Tokyo exhibition and learn more about her work to share with forum members to poison you all more !
Wait…pigeon??
As you requested, I asked the enamel queen 👸 , let’s
You are welcome ! I arrived Tokyo late night and made this post around 3am. :-) BTW, not pigeon, but
If I meet Anita at the exhibition, I will ask her whether she could share photos or not due to confidentiality reasons.
Bravo Gordon!
Great post Gordon! Your finest post ever in my opinion!
Beautifully written! Thank you.
Thanks for your kind comments which
More to come from my Tokyo exhibition trip !
Very informative post on the enamel Queen! That last pic is pure watch porn in more ways than one! Love it!
Thanks doublesix ! Your specific comment on the last pic made me think why I did
Live and learn.