What Products Does Enamel Art Supply Distribute? Our focus is to be a distributor for the excellent enamels coming from Japan. These include Ninomiya, Nihon Shippo and Hirosawa. We are also distributors for hard to find tools and supplies. We won’t be carrying products that you can locate easily in other places. Often our product range is expanded when Merry-Lee, the technical advisor recognizes a need for specific items and requests that Mack includes them in inventory. This includes the wonderful firing racks that we have custom made for us, 100 and 60 mesh sifters from Thompson as they are not a stock item of theirs, P3 kits and extra heavy Mica sheets. https://www.enamelartsupply.com/tools In addition to Japanese enamel, EAS also carries French Soyer Black #36 and hard fusing silver flux Soyer #3 flux. These are favorites of Merry-Lee’s students and are often difficult to get in the US. Also, when Merry-Lee teaches Opalescent Workshops she recommends English Blythe T-8 and we have that. You will find the Blythe and Soyer enamels under Miscellaneous Enamel. We will not be adding other Blythe or Soyer colors. Under the Metals heading, you will find Foils, Blanks and Cloisonne Wire. The foils include the amazing Ginbari Foil from Japan. It is roughly three times as thick as the regular silver foil (4.5 microns), very easy to handle and embossable. Watch for the addition of an even thicker silver foil that we are having made for us in Japan (10 microns). In addition, we stock domestic gold foil (1.4 microns) and sell it with a very low markup, domestic silver foil (1.4 microns) and Italian silver Foil (very thin, not too sure of the measurement). We are currently investigating having thicker 24K foil (4.5 microns) made for us. We are trying to replace the Lotus Root Powder that Coral used to sell but have not replicated it yet although we have had about 10 people testing 4 different varieties. The blanks are so far limited to 3 different round sizes. They are made by Darci and are aimed at people that have limited time to enamel and would like to start with a silver blank of exceptional quality. We will expand the offerings of blanks if the reception is good. The fine silver cloisonne wire is currently being offered in 5 sizes.

Ninomiya Enamels? This Japanese enamel manufacturer is the one that most people are familiar with. Coral at Enamelwork Supply worked tirelessly to make these enamels available to people worldwide for the last 30 years. We owe her so much for her dedication to the excellence of the enamel we have had available in the enameling community. In 2018, Coral retired and Mack took over the daunting job of acquiring these enamels for distribution. They are excellent in quality with a vast color range. The biggest hurdle is that they are extremely slow in production and orders take 4-8 months to process! We received our first order of 111 transparent after 8 months of waiting and had already re-ordered colors that we knew would be fast sellers. Everyday, we are selling out of colors and the reorders have not yet begun to arrive. Also, the Opaque and NG colors have begun to trickle in and we have the entire color range on order but no word on a ship date. We have only added one of the P series as of this date as there did not seem to be much demand for those colors. If you are a fan of the P series, let us know which specific colors and we will add them if possible.

Ninomiya did make a couple of changes in their numbering system. There were a few that were H and a number for example H13. All H enamels are now N enamels and the numbers remained the same. For example H13 is now N13. Similarly, the LT colors are now labeled as L only and the color numbers have remained the same, for example LT60 is now L60. Otherwise all the enamels are exactly the same as always. Ninomiya has not printed a new color chart for something like 20 years! We have no plans to print a color chart as it would be very expensive to do so and the digital age is upon us!

Nihon Shippo Enamels! Coral carried a handful of these colors and and they were listed on her site with no differentiation from the Ninomiya colors, you may recognize them as the “G” colors. In April of 2019, Merry-Lee, tested about 150 Nihon Shippo colors that we have never had access to in the United States. Oh my! They are extraordinary enamels, gorgeous quality and such a sophisticated color range. We are adding more Nihon Shippo weekly, beginning with the colors that have really never been dreamed of before and filling gaps in color ranges. Truthfully, they are all a little different than anything you will find in Ninomiya with very few exact matches. Yes, you may need them all… Colors that have a G in the name were formulated for use on silver with a stunning array of pinks and reds that are NOT reactive to silver! If the color number has no G in front of it, it was formulated for copper. We are finding that all are beautiful on silver and copper and are using them as if there were no difference. (The silver flux is G110, Copper flux is 110- you will not want to use 110 directly on silver as it has a slightly yellow cast) Nihon Shippo has some nice opaques but we are focusing for now on the transparent line. We know that we have neglected a few color families, namely Blues and Greys. This is because those selections are quite well represented in the Hirosawa line. We will eventually have just about everything that Nihon Shippo makes as they are so spectacular.

Hirosawa Enamels! Hirosawa is one of the best kept secrets of the enameling world! In September of 2019, we had already been waiting for Ninomiya enamels to arrive for 5 months. Here we were, an enamel supply company with 9 colors to sell! Merry-Lee had heard about a manufacturer previously unknown in the US and went about researching this company. She ordered 100 grams each of 91 colors and they arrived 3 weeks later! Not only were they fast to ship, but the colors were amazing and the quality was so impressive! After testing, Merry-Lee advised Mack to order 88 of the 91 colors and we had them to offer by the end of October. We are so pleased to be able to offer these wonderful enamels. They continue to be a reliable shipper, we love everything about them! There are now 98 colors in the Hirosawa line up.

Can any transparent pinks and reds be used directly on silver? Nihon Shippo is definitely the queen in this category. These are all silver friendly- G701A, G701, G701C, G702A, G702, G702C, G703A, G703, G703C, G704, G709 and we stock all of them! Hirosawa also has an impressive range of silver friendly pinks and reds including S-111, s-172A, S-172B, ST-005 and ST-011. We currently stock all of the Hirosawa. Ninomiya has only one silver friendly pink SL-5 and no non-reactive reds. If you look at the testplates on each color, you will be able to see whether the colors are reactive or not.

Do you have a telephone number? Nope. Mack and Merry-Lee are both hard of hearing and find phone communication to be frustrating and inaccurate. We are very good about responding to emails.

Can I place my order over the phone or through email? We would like to have you use our website and pay by Credit Card or PayPal through our secure server. We don’t want to make mistakes taking your order and we have no way to process credit cards directly. If you prefer to send a check, you may place an order via email and we will give you a total. Your order can be shipped after the check clears.

I put items in my cart and now I can’t find my cart? This sometimes happens when ordering on your phone. If you look closely on the top right hand corner you will see a little number. That is the number of items in your cart. Click on that and it will take you to your cart. We love SquareSpace but it does have a few little quirks!

International orders; please be advised, in this time occasionally international packages take much longer to receive and/or get caught up in customs. We are not responsible for and will not reship your order at our expense if this happens. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Making Sense of the Color Numbers for Japanese Enamels by Merry-Lee Rae

There are currently three manufacturers in Japan. Ninomiya is the most widely known so I will start with it.

 Ninomiya

 The N series of transparents were formulated for work on silver. This does not necessarily mean that they are not silver reactive. It just means that they look pretty on silver. They are N plus a one or two-digit number.

The L series of transparents are formulated for copper. They include most of the deeper shades as they work well over copper. They are L plus a two-digit number. In their opaques, they also have L series, copper formulated and designated by L plus a three-digit number.

 There are also opaques in the B series which also have three-digit numbers. I can theorize that they are formulated for silver but once again there are colors that are silver-sensitive.

 Their opals (which technically are not true opalescent but rather semi-transparent or translucent. They are not tricky to use and are very straight forward) all begin with NG and are followed by three digits.

 The semi-opaques all begin with P and are followed by three digits.

 In addition, there are a few orphans, I am not sure why but include SL5, ND65, ND66, and two others but I am drawing a blank. All transparent. Ninomiya simplified their Lettering system 10-15 years ago. At the time there were some H transparents which were changed to N. Example N13 used to be H13. There were some LT transparents that became L for example LT61 is now L61. Oh yes- there is one N Opaque. N2 opaque white. They currently have no plans to confuse us further by changing their numbering systems.  Unfortunately, some distributors change the numbers to make them proprietary. Gah!

 Nihon Shippo

 Nihon Shippo has a transparent series G formulated for silver. (Plus, three digits) Unlike the other manufacturers, many of the G pinks and reds are silver-compatible. Many of the G series have three different versions of the same color. They standardize those variations with a suffix of A being the lightest, no suffix being Medium and C suffix being the darkest. Let’s call them color families. As an example, G701A is super light pink, G701 is light pink and G701C is a slightly darker pink.

 Nihon Shippo has copper-formulated transparents also. They use no letter. Most are three digits, starting with a 1. Once again, they have color families. For example:  109 is a deep orange, 109A is a medium orange and 1090 is a peach or pastel orange. Carrie, who is the product manager at Enamel Art Supply thinks that the 0 (zero) on the end of 1090 is probably an O (oh) and so you will see her writing 1090 with a slash through the second O. Or 109O if you can see the difference. That way all three are 109 but two have a suffix.

Are you guys still reading? Maybe someone should put this in a place where I can find it again!

Thought I’d better post that before I lost it. Nihon Shippo also make opaques. They are mostly two-digit numbers. They also make semi-opaques which are three digits starting with a 2.

 Hirosawa

 On to Hirosawa. They make a series of transparents formulated for silver that begin with S-. Truthfully, Hirosawa calls them HS- but at Enamel Art Supply, we took off that H to try to make them less confusing. They also have color families. For example, S-9 is a medium grey. That family includes S-9AAA, S-9AA, S-9A, S-9, S-9B. S-9AAA is the lightest and S-9B is the darkest.

 Their second series of transparents are H- and two digits formulated for copper. There are two transparent ST that are spectacular silver friendly pink and red.

 Hirosawa’s opaques are H- and three digits.

Their translucent have a prefix of P or PS.

 I think all three companies have used systems that work for them and probably developed over time to accommodate a changing product line. By the way, I use the silver and the copper formulas on both silver and copper.