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The Incised Ornament on the Celtic Mirror from Colchester, Essex

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

Cyril Fox  and
M. R. Hull
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Extract

The Colchester Celtic mirror has been known to students of the period since a photograph of it was published by Henry Laver in the Proceedings of our Society (x·x, 1905, p. 213) as one object in an important grave-group. Laver noted that the back of that portion of the mirror-plate which is preserved is ‘ornamented with a spiral pattern’, but this pattern is not to be seen in the reproduction. Another reference in the literature is that by R. A. Smith, Archaeologia, lxi, 338, who mentions ‘traces of engraved scrollwork’ and an ‘imbricated filling, not of the usual basket-pattern’. Mr. E. T. Leeds produced another group photograph of the find; Celtic Ornament, fig. 10 and p. 30.

The writers of this article collaborated for the purpose of studying the ornament, and of reconstructing the complete design, if that should prove possible. The incised work was found to be very difficult to follow owing to a pustule-like corrosion all over the mirror fragment. Thus, as one of us remarked after the first attempt, ‘it is only here and there, either in a strong cross-light, or with the lens, that one can see and copy it’.

Thereafter both of us worked on the mirror fragment, and gradually the pattern emerged; it is reproduced in fig. 1. This drawing is necessarily an imitative representation of the original; it records not only actual marks on the bronze, but also direct inductions, such as the continuation of a partly preserved curve or circle, a line drawn on one side to match a line preserved on the other, and the development of the ‘matting’ or hatching from intermittent appearances. We have thought it well to indicate corrosion, but the dense obscurity of the original due to this cause cannot be reproduced.

Portions of the rim of the mirror survive. This is as usual a separate strip of metal bent in a C-shape round the edge of the plate. The handle of the mirror is an attractive variant of a familiar design which can be better appreciated in the drawing than in the photographs previously published.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 28 , Issue 3-4 , October 1948 , pp. 123 - 137
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1948

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References

page 123 note 1 The handle is studied in another paper by Fox, Cyril, Arch. Camb. 1948Google Scholar, forthcoming. There is, it should be noted, a remarkable contrast in condition between the handle, on the one hand, and the mirror-plate and its rim binding, on the othe. The former is clean and perfect, its detail as sharp as when it was made. Plate and handle are precondition sumably of different alloys.

page 126 note 1 Jacobsthal, Early Celtic Art, p. 89.

page 126 note 2 Ibid., nos. 43, pl. 37, 450 a and b, pl. 277; and pp. 89 and 92.

page 127 note 1 The primary technique can be studied on the Llyn Cerrig Bach shield-boss where the setting-out lines are perfectly preserved. See Arch. Camb. 1945, p. 203, fig. 2 and pl. III B. Also A Find of the Early Iron Age at Llyn Cerrig Bach, Anglesey, 1946, pp. 7–8Google Scholar, fig. 3 and pl. v (a).

page 127 note 2 Other examples in this country are seen on the Cerrig-y-Drudion bowl, the Clevedon torc, the Battersea shield, and the Bapchild, Kent, and eight Westhall, Suffolk, terrets.

page 127 note 3 Jacobsthal, Early Celtic Art, p. 92.

page 128 note 1 Ibid., p. 84.

page 128 note 2 ‘A Panel of Celtic Ornament …’, Antiq. Journ. 1940, p. 346Google Scholar. The Elmswell panel with which this London piece is compared is in many respects reminiscent of the Colchester design. These two pieces represent the later phases of a development, in relief work, parallel to that which we are studying, and deserve further consideration from this point of view.

page 129 note 1 Arch., xiv, pl. XXI, 3, 4.

page 129 note 2 For Britain see, for example, Kendrick, T. D., Anglo-Saxon Art, 1938, p. 8Google Scholar; Fox, C. in Arch. Camb. 1945, pp. 212–13Google Scholar; for the Continent, Jacobsthal, Early Celtic Art, 1944, pp. 77, 79, 91–2, 94–5.Google Scholar

page 130 note 1 1945; pp. 206, 210, and pp. 216–18.

page 132 note 1 The range of date suggested in 1945 was 50 to 25 B.C; this now appears to be a little too early. Fox, , Arch. Camb. 1945, pp. 215–16.Google Scholar

page 132 note 2 Fig. 7A in Arch. Camb. 1945, p. 211, shows a form related to our scrolls, but their origin is not as described on p. 210. The restatement of this theory in A Find of the Early Iron Age from Llyn Cerrig Bach, Anglesey, p. 55 and fig. 31, is also withdrawn.

page 132 note 3 The elements of design discussed in this section may be positive or negative forms. The distinction is regarded as unimportant for the present purpose (see p. 129 above).

page 133 note 1 In Praetorius' drawing, reproduced in pl. XVIb, the left-hand circle is accidentally omitted.

page 133 note 2 Compare, on fig. 7, the inverted Y2, Y3, and Y4.

page 133 note 3 A fourth mirror, the unprovenanced ‘Gibbs’, is included on pl. XVI (d) to illustrate the same development in a different but related tradition.

page 133 note 4 Fox, Cyril, Arch. Camb. 1945, fig. II and pp. 216–18.Google Scholar

page 134 note 1 These comparisons were invoked by a remark of Mr. T. D. Kendrick's to the effect that the intricate patterning on the ribbons of Desborough represented that final effort of enrichment characteristic of all active art movements. Surcharging is indeed met with in earlier phases of our art: cf. the Lisnacroghera and Bugthorpe scabbards (Arch. Camb. 1945, pl. v, opp. p. 209).

page 134 note 2 There is a case, as Mr. Charles Green has pointed out to me, for earlier dating of the Birdlip brooch than is at present admitted.

page 134 note 3 Camulodunum, by Hawkes, C. F. C. and Hull, M. R., Research Report, Society of Antiquaries, 1947.Google Scholar

page 135 note 1 The estate maps of 1806 and later call this field Chesnut Field, which is probably more correct.

page 135 note 2 Colchester Mus. Rep. 1909, 11 f., pl. VI; 1913,12 f., pl. v; vi, 1916, 10, pl. 1 (left); 1923, 9 f., pl. iv; Swarling, pl. III, 2; xi, 1–3.

page 135 note 3 4314.22, illustr. Swarling, pl. xi, 2.

page 135 note 4 Trans. Essex Arch. Soc. xviii, 269; Colchester Mus. Rep. 1920, 7, pl. 11Google Scholar (top); 1932, 32 (where read ‘pl. viii, 1, 2’); Antiq. Journ. xxii, 59 ff.