I'm currently doing a project to make an alter cross, roughly 14 inches tall and 8 inches wide.

The cross should be in a style similar to that found in 12th century medieval religious art. In particular giving a similar feeling to this piece taken from page 113 of the Émaux du moyen âge book by Marie-Madeleine Guathier:

The piece above is done in champlevé enamelling, with quite a lot of engraving too. If I match the style of enamelling it will certainly help to give the right overall feeling for the cross.

A piece of work this large is far too big to go in my kiln and, also, I wouldn't want to do the piece in one go incase anything went wrong! I decided to make the cross in sections with the interface between sections made into part of the design like this:

Where each of the semi-circles is where there is a circle on the design:

The cross is to be made from brass. I have the Milton Bridge British Enamels set, these are tested for application to gilding metal, which is high copper content brass (10% zinc, 90% copper). I'm quite familiar with these enamels and used them to create the set of cloisonné door knobs last year.

I roughly cut out the gilding metal from 4mm plate:

and then, first, milled the bottom section into shape:

So far so good!

I'll cut out the other pieces after I've made a bit more progress with the bottom section. The application of heat during enamelling may change the shape slightly so I may need to give a little bit of extra brass at the interface to allow me to file the piece back into shape - we'll see!