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XI.—On a Silver Bowl and Cover of the Ninth or Tenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2011

O. M. Dalton
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Extract

The silver vessel here illustrated (Plate XLVII. bwas acquired many years ago by Sir A. W. Franks, and at his death passed by bequest to the British Museum. It is a deep bowl, with a cover made to be lifted by a projecting handle in the form of a quatrefoil upon a vertical stem, the height, without the cover, being 3½ inches. The whole of the exterior both of bowl and cover is richly decorated with designs in relief. Four equidistant panels each containing a large quatrefoil are enclosed by vine stems, with occasional bunches of grapes at which birds are pecking; in the interspaces between the panels the stems unite to form a lozenge containing a quatrefoil of smaller dimensions. Wherever two stems meet they are bound by collar-like bands, which are doubtless conventionalized representations of closely-twining tendrils. The design thus forms a continuous pattern well adapted to the sides of a vessel; it is repeated on a smaller scale upon the cover. The grapes, the leaves, and the bodies of the birds are all inlaid with niello. The ground throughout is gilded, as is the interior of the bowl. The bottom has been rasped or filed on the exterior, though the interior remains in its original condition. It has heen suggested that the bowl may once have had a foot.

Type
Research Article
Information
Archaeologia , Volume 61 , Issue 2 , 1909 , pp. 357 - 360
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1909

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References

page 358 note a Comte A. de Bastard, Peintures des Manuscrits, Part V. 132 (British Museum Copy). The connection of Carolingian MSS. with the Early-Christian art of Syria is well established.

page 358 note b Molinier, E., Histoire des arts appliqués à l'industrie, vol. iGoogle Scholar. Ivoires, pl. x.; A. Maskell, Ivories, pl. xx.

page 358 note c Victoria County History, Hampshire, i. 398Google Scholar.

page 358 note d Errard, C. and Gayet, A., L'art byzantin, i. Venise, pl. xix.Google Scholar; MS. of Beatus on the Apocalypse in the British Museum, fol. 7 b (Add. MS. 11695).

page 358 note e British Museum, Catalogue of Ivory Carvings of the Christian Era, No. 15; Maskell, A., Ivories, pl. xvi.Google Scholar

page 359 note a Memoires de la Société des Antiquaires du Nord, 1872–1877, pp. 374–5.Google Scholar

page 359 note b Archaeologia, xviii. 199–M202Google Scholar. The Halton Bowl is much less massive than the present example.

page 359 note c Nesbitt, and Thompson, , Vetusta Monunienta, 1885, p. 9Google Scholar; von Hefner Alteneok, J. H., Trachten Kunstwerke und Geräthschaften, pl. viii.Google Scholar

page 360 note a Beissel, S., Zeitschrift für Christliche Kunst IX. 1896, pp. 364 ff.Google Scholar It may be recalled that there was an Anglo-Saxon colony in Rome from the first half of the eighth century, established in the neighbourhood of the Vatican. Niello had been freely used on the ornaments of the pagan Anglo-Saxons.