Ottoman Kuyumculuk in Istanbul lists a silver crescent-and-star ring in red enamel for about 2,390 TL. A few rows down there is a green one with the word Hiç cut into the face, and a burgundy one carrying a tughra, the sultan's calligraphic monogram. All three are described with the same word: mineli. Enamelled.
That word turns up in 841 listings in our catalogue, from 61 of the 98 jewellers with listings. Necklaces lead with 329, then earrings with 209 and rings with 202. There are 64 bracelets and 19 prayer beads. It is one of the most common descriptions in Turkish jewellery, and on its own it tells you almost nothing about what you are buying.
The word, and the two things it covers
Mine (say mee-NEH) is the Turkish word for enamel. It came into Turkish from Persian. Mineli means "with enamel", and mine işlemeli means "worked with enamel". On our English pages you will see all of it rendered as "enamel", which is correct as far as it goes.
The trouble is that the jewellery trade, in Türkiye and everywhere else, uses that one word for two different materials.
Fired enamel is glass. The enameller grinds coloured glass to a powder, packs it into the recesses of the metal, and puts the piece in a kiln at around 750–850 °C, depending on the enamel and the metal, until the powder melts and fuses to the surface. Often there is a second layer and a second firing, then grinding and polishing flat. The result is a thin layer of glass bonded to silver or gold. It is hard, it holds its colour more or less forever, and it is brittle. Drop it on stone and it can chip.
Cold enamel is resin, usually a two-part epoxy with pigment mixed in. It is poured or dabbed into the same kind of recesses and left to harden at room temperature, or with gentle heat. No kiln, no glass. It is far quicker and cheaper, which is what makes bright colour possible on a cast ring that would never justify hours of kiln work. It is also softer than glass. It scratches, and over years in sunlight some resins dull or yellow.
Neither one is a scam. Cold enamel is an honest material for inexpensive everyday pieces, and much of the low-priced Turkish silver you will see is almost certainly made this way. The problem is paying fired-enamel prices for resin, or expecting resin to behave like glass.
What the listings say, and what they don't
I went through all 841 titles looking for any word that would separate the two. Kiln, fired, glass, cold, epoxy, resin, in Turkish or English. Zero hits. Not a single title in the catalogue tells you which kind of enamel it is.
That is not evasion. Turkish shop titles are built from metal, purity, colour, motif and product type, and fired-or-cold is just not one of the slots. So the question is yours to ask.
A few other things worth knowing about these titles:
- Two listings from Tesbih Pasajı in Erzurum describe their prayer beads as Alman mine, "German enamel". I have not been able to pin down exactly what that trade name refers to, and I would rather not guess. If you are interested in one of those, ask the shop what it means in their workshop.
- One Turk Style Shop listing uses emaye instead of mine. Same idea, a different loanword. Our matching does not catch it, so if you are searching for enamel by hand, search both.
- Our English titles are machine-translated, and things get lost. Ottoman Kuyumculuk's Siyah Mineli Hiç Gümüş Yüzük comes out as "Black Enamel Silver Ring". The word Hiç, which is the whole point of the ring, disappeared. Taşhan Erzurum's Gümüş-Mine İşlemeli became "Silver-Mine Engraved", which sounds like a mining term. When a title reads oddly, open the original listing and look at the Turkish.
(Hiç means "nothing", a small statement of humility and a favourite word in Turkish calligraphy. The translation managed to drop the nothing.)
Telling glass from resin with the piece in your hand
None of these is conclusive alone. Together they are usually enough.
Look at the surface level. Fired enamel is ground down after firing, so it usually sits flush with the surrounding metal, flat as a tabletop. Cold enamel is often slightly domed, a little meniscus where the liquid resin pulled up at the edges before it set. Tilt it under a light: a flat glass surface gives a clean, straight reflection, a domed resin one bends it.
Feel the temperature. Glass feels cold and stays cold for a moment longer, much like the metal around it. Resin feels closer to plastic, slightly warmer. On a small inlay you may feel nothing at all.
Look for wear. On a used piece, resin shows fine scratches and a soft, slightly cloudy surface where it rubs. Fired enamel stays glossy for decades, and when it fails it chips, leaving a sharp little crater with bare metal at the bottom.
Consider the price. Kiln work is slow, with real losses when a piece cracks in cooling. A cast sterling ring with bright red enamel for the price of a meal out is very unlikely to be fired glass. The ring can still be perfectly good. The numbers just don't allow for a kiln.
Then ask the jeweller directly: fırın mine mi, soğuk mine mi? Kiln enamel or cold enamel? A shop that does real kiln work will be glad you asked.
Where the enamel shows up
Small symbolic silver. This is the bulk. Crescent and star rings, tughra rings, grey wolf rings, Mührü Süleyman (Seal of Solomon) rings with enamelled tulips. Of the 202 enamelled rings, 107 are men's rings, and 34 carry a crescent and star, a grey wolf or a tughra. If you want to know what a tughra on a ring actually is and is not, our tughra piece goes through it. The grey wolf, bozkurt, carries strong political associations in Türkiye. Know that before you wear one.
Evil eye and charms. About 75 of the enamel listings mention nazar, the evil eye, or an eye motif. Enamel is a sensible way to do a nazar on a ring. Fired enamel can chip, but a thin layer fused to the metal takes a knock far better than a loose glass bead set on top, which we covered in the evil eye post. İndigo Takı, which has more enamel listings than anyone in our catalogue at 82, also does enamelled çintemani earrings, the Ottoman motif of three dots over wavy lines.
Prayer beads. The enamel here is mostly on the silver rather than the beads: the imame (the long head bead where the strand meets the tassel), the spacers, and silver caps worked into the stone. Taşhan Erzurum lists several tesbihs in oltu, a black form of jet from the Oltu district of Erzurum province, with red, white or green enamel and silver work, from about 9,650 TL to about 27,150 TL. If you are looking at those, read our oltu stone guide first. The silver is the easy part to judge. The stone is where people get caught. Grande Amor in Istanbul lists a silver tesbih with black enamel for about 13,900 TL.
Gold. Only 47 of the 841 listings state a karat, from 11 jewellers. Diriliş Kuyumculuk has a run of 14-karat men's rings in enamel, several in black, around 30,000 to 64,000 TL. Güneş Kuyumculuk lists two 14-karat gold tesbihs with lapis-blue and red enamel. Nusret Takı does 22-karat pieces, including an enamelled telkâri necklace at about 146,000 TL. That is rare: enamel and telkâri filigree together turn up in exactly one title in the whole catalogue. A separate 56 listings say kaplama, plated, so read "gold" carefully.
One practical point on gold. In Türkiye, gold jewellery is usually priced by weight plus a labour charge. Enamel has weight. On a heavily enamelled gold piece it is fair to ask whether the gram figure is for the gold alone or for the finished piece.
All prices here are as we last read them from each jeweller's site. They move with the gold price and the lira, so check the shop's own page before deciding anything.
Looking after it
Most advice about cleaning silver will hurt enamel, so a few rules.
No ultrasonic cleaners. The vibration can crack fired enamel and loosen resin from its recess.
No silver dips. They are acidic, and they can etch glass enamel and cloud resin. A polishing cloth is fine on the metal. Keep it off the colour, especially with resin, which can be dulled by the polish compound.
Take enamelled rings off for the gym, gardening and anything involving a hammer. Fired enamel chips from impact, not from wear.
Keep perfume and hand sanitiser off resin enamel where you can. Some resins soften or haze with repeated contact.
Store pieces separately. A hard stone in the same pouch will scratch even glass enamel.
Worn or chipped enamel can usually be repaired. Cold enamel is simple to refill. Fired enamel has to go back into a kiln, sometimes with the stones taken out first, so ask before you assume it is fixable.
And if you are unsure whether the silver under the colour is what the stamp claims, here is how to check 925 silver at home. One warning from that piece applies here: the density test does not work on enamelled jewellery, because the enamel throws off the numbers.