1. BEADS WITH APPLIQUÉ DECORATION GREEK OR PHŒNICIAN. ABOUT SIXTH CENTURY. B.C.
2. CHEVRON BEADS, FORMED FROM SOLID RODS
PROBABLY VENETIAN
3, 4 & 5. MISCELLANEOUS BEADS, FROM FRANKISH AND OTHER TOMBS IN RHINE AND MOSELLE DISTRICT
EARLY MEDIÆVAL
As far as glass is concerned, it is in the beads that we see most clearly the return to the older fashions. Of these Franko-Saxon beads the British Museum has a great store, not only from English graves but from those of the Franks and other Germanic tribes on the Continent. Now these beads differ entirely from those found in Celtic and Roman tombs. Of these last, the dominant type—and we must confine ourselves to this—is of a turquoise or deep blue, generally more or less transparent, and they are often longitudinally ribbed. In a collection of Germanic beads, on the other hand, the prevailing colours are red and yellow, of ochry tints; they are almost invariably quite opaque, and the patterns are mostly built up on the surface in a way that reminds us of the primitive glass of the Eastern Mediterranean ([Plate XV.] 3). A herring-bone pattern of fine lines is very characteristic, and the delicacy of the designs on some of the beads from Allemanic graves in Switzerland and elsewhere rivals that of the highly finished work of the Egyptians.
Of this early Germanic glass generally, we may say that the greatest interest lies in the types that depart most from the Roman glass which preceded it, and on which it is of course as a whole founded. In some cases the northern influence is only seen in a certain barbaric magnificence—as in the examples from Germanic graves in Italy, lately added to the collection in the Glass Room at the British Museum. Here we see for the first time the drinking-horn of the north; this fine specimen, trumpet-ended and fluted with long gadroons, is of a deep blue glass wound round with white threads. Of similar origin is the rhyton, of moulded glass of a rich amber colour, which lies beside it. It may be noted that this form too, in spite of its classical associations, was originally, as the name implies, derived from the horn of some animal. It is not impossible that these vessels were made by local Italian glass-workers to the order of the barbarians, on the occasion of the burial of one of their leaders.
These are, however, only local accidental finds. With the glass used by, or at least buried with the bodies of, our Anglo-Saxon ancestors during the two centuries that followed their arrival in England, we have a fairly intimate acquaintance; as I have said, it differs little from the contemporary or in some cases rather earlier Frankish glass of the Rhine, Moselle, and Meuse districts.
That glass was made in the south of Britain in Roman times there is every reason to believe, and we look in Kent for the most probable place for its manufacture, somewhere, perhaps, not far from the estuary of the Medway (cf. p. [86]). It is the Kentish graves again that have yielded the largest quantity of Anglo-Saxon glass, as well as the greatest varieties of forms. It is noticeable, however, that specimens of what is the most remarkable and characteristic type of Anglo-Saxon glass have been found in many other parts of the country. I refer of course to the horns and conical cups decorated with long pendulous lobes or ‘prunts.’ These drinking-cups have been found, apart from the Kentish examples, in Durham, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Cambridgeshire, and in the upper Thames valley. Individual prunts (these ‘thorned bosses’ are more substantial than the thin surrounding glass) have occasionally turned up in excavations in London and elsewhere. Abroad, precisely similar vessels have been taken from Frankish graves in the Rhine provinces. It is more remarkable that several cups so ornamented have been found in Illyria, in the Narenta Valley. Mr. Arthur Evans traces these ‘thorn-bossed beakers’ to the graves of Ostrogothic chiefs, and thinks that their fragility may be taken as a proof of local manufacture (Archæologia, vol. xlviii. pp. 75-84). On the other hand, the high technical skill required in the blowing of such glasses has led most antiquaries to regard our English examples as of Continental origin, not improbably from the Rhine or Meuse country.
PRUNTED BEAKER, FROM ANGLO-SAXON BURIAL MOUND
TAPLOW