Now the time has come to realise the profits of a very clever placement of money.The mastermind behind the collection is Edmund de Unger, now in his seventies, and best known as a great collector of Islamic art – the scholarly catalogue of his collection runs to five volumes. He is Hungarian by birth, but settled in Britain in the late-Forties to escape the Communist regime, and became a barrister. His career flourished and he is now a tax exile, resident in Switzerland – though he still keeps his art collection in Britain. And money matters in this case, since the collection belongs to a group of friends who bought it as an investment back in the early Seventies. The “in-vestment” has since matured through loans to museums. The British Museum mounted an exhibition of the star items in 1981, and from 1982 to 1996 the whole collection was on loan to the Nelson- Atkins Museum in Kansas City.

But apparently no museum, not even in the United States, was ready to put a hand in its pocket and come up with the pounds 20m needed to purchase the collection en bloc. Two hundred or so years later, the main centre of production had shifted to France. From the 12th to the 14th century, the workshops of Limoges supplied their marvellous creations to clients all over Europe, while other craftsmen were at work in Spain, Germany, Italy and the Low Countries – the “Mosan” enamels made in the region of the river Meuse rival the fame of Limoges.The usual practice at this time was to apply the enamels to copper. Coloured glass was ground to powder, then either used to fill a pattern made with raised wires on top of a copper plate – this is called cloisonne enamelling – or to fill troughs gouged out of the metal – which is called champleve. When raised to a high temperature, the powdered glass melts and fuses to the metal. In the 15th century, a technique was found for literally painting a copper plate with ground glass, which was then melted to form a highly finished picture.

All of these techniques are represented in the Keir collection.One can’t help feeling sorry that it has to be broken up and dispersed. The fashion began at the court of the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople in the 10th century. The two most mag- nificent plaques, one depicting angels with multi-coloured wings and the other royal martyrs, are expected to reach around pounds 2m each – though each measures little more than 6in across.Although the technique of enamelling was known in antiquity, there was a great flowering of the art in the Middle Ages. Plaques may only be an inch or so across and should be regarded, as they were in the Middle Ages, as jewelled pictures. Sotheby’s has wonderful little plaques with abstract patterning, about 3 by 112in, which must once have embellished a casket or shrine and which are now priced around pounds 3,000 to pounds 4,000. Other plaques have undulating patterns of foliage and others again are essentially copper pictures from the Bible story coloured in with enamels The more sophisticated the picture, the higher the price. And Bond Street is only one stop on the world tour Sotheby’s has organised for the collection, which will be auctioned in New York in November.Some of the pieces are very small.

And it is 20 years since the last important collection was seen at auction.
This week’s exhibition of the Keir collection at Sotheby’s in Bond Street is a major event. Valued at around pounds 20m, it is the finest collection of medieval enamels left in private hands. Bright primary colours have become the signature tune of the Middle Ages But when do you actually see medieval enamels? Almost never. The days when you could turn up a piece in a junk shop – if you could recognise it – are long gone.

Shrines, caskets and crucifixes, as well as luxury household goods, sparkled with colour, partly on account of their embellishment with precious and semi-precious stones and partly on account of these bright enamel plaques

Today no costume romance is complete without them. “This would be a big compromise,” said Marcus Field, who acknowledged that he was worried about how long the chair would last, with its hard plastic pedestal and easily stained upholstery.STOCKISTSCredo and Balans from Sven Christiansen, tel: 01483 302728; Meda and Charles Eames from Vitra, tel: 0171 408 1122; SoHo from Knoll, tel: 0171 236 6655; Aeron from Herman Miller, 01225 428471 !. Brilliantly coloured enamels – made from glass which has melted and fused to a metal surface – were considered as rare and desirable as jewels by the craftsmen of the Middle Ages. Most importantly, it is a piece of furniture which fits into a home interior and could double as a dining room or occasional chair.*KNOLL SOHO TASK CHAIRFrom pounds 250, sample pounds 280Produced by Knoll especially for “small offices and home offices”, the SoHo comes in three violent colours (orange, lime or yellow). For despite the huge difference in cost with the other chairs surveyed, the SoHo “looks and feels cheaper than it is” according to Shelley Grobler, who added, “Apart from the fact that it looks like a Teletubby, I hate this chair.” It seemed less comfortable than many low cost typing chairs and Emma Bartlett complained about the “rough, itchy, woven fabric which scratches your legs.” It is lightweight (23lb), but as the castors don’t move well, it’s hard to pull across a carpeted floor. It has a sliding seat mechanism and simple under-seat controls, but there its appeal ends. “It may not be ergonomically perfect, but there are other features which make you forgive any shortcomings.” All testers felt it would last forever, with the leather wearing nicely and the possibility of recycling minimal components after a lifetime’s use.