Brightwater Enamelers
Gdańsk, Poland — enameling since 1954. The No. 03 Enamel Mug Set: bone-white steel, ink-black rims, fired twice.
The enamel works grew up beside the shipyards, coating steel for people who took it to sea and expected it back. The mugs in our catalog are dipped and fired the same way the marine fittings were: a ground coat to bond, a bone-white top coat for the body, and the ink-black rim laid on by hand before the second firing.
Two firings is the whole secret, and it is not a secret. The first bonds glass to steel at a heat that would ruin the color; the second sets the color at a heat that would ruin the bond if it came first. Order matters, in enamel as in most things.
Forty sets a week come off the kiln carts, and each one is rung with a knuckle on its way to the crate — a chipped coat sounds different, and the ear that checks them has been checking since before we existed.
At the bench this quarter
Run 9 — one hundred and twenty sets — is through its second firing, with the kiln booked solid into August. A restock crossed customs in June and is on the Crosby Street shelves now.