In the spring of 1839, during some excavations in Thames Street, was discovered a fibula which happily passed straightway into the hands of Mr. Roach Smith, and he wrote a memoir upon it which may be seen in the Archæologia for 1840, accompanied with a splendid illustration in colour and gold. It contains a bust in cloison-work enamel, and invites comparison with our Jewel more than any of those in the above list, probably more than any other extant specimen. It is now in the British Museum. Both the figure and the filigree are of superior workmanship to the Alfred Jewel, as if it were a later and more refined product of the same school. A French critic calls it Byzantine, and assigns it to the eleventh century[19].
So far about other extant specimens of enamel cloisonnée. This species of enamel rises like an island out of the broad level of the enamel champlevée, in which the plate was prepared for the vitreous deposit by scooping the pattern upon it. To this common method belong the older and more rudimentary enamels of the British horse-gear, correctly described by Philostratus, who will be quoted below. To this belong also the late enamels, for which during the thirteenth century Limoges was famous.
The history of the art of enamelling is very imperfectly known, and the paucity of extant specimens makes the investigation the more difficult. The canvas upon which these pictures were laid consisted of plates of the precious metals, the smaller works being laid upon gold or silver, the larger on copper. As a natural consequence it happened that as soon as they were antiquated or had served their turn, they were lightly cast into the melting-pot, save where they were protected by some peculiar veneration.
Hence it has come to pass that a favourite art of the Dark and Middle Ages, which we have reason to believe was for centuries very prolific (until it was superseded by the increased vigour of painting and sculpture in the fourteenth century), is now represented by a few specimens only, and its history is hard to retrace. I shall make no attempt to supply this want, and shall only rehearse a few interesting facts which the present investigation has brought to my knowledge. Origins I leave to specialists: but this I may say, that such evidence as the present enquiry has brought within the circle of my observation seems to suggest a Keltic source for the Enamel in our Jewel.
The earliest mention of enamel to which we can confidently point is found in the book of Philostratus entitled Pictures (Icones, Εἰκόνες). This author was a Greek rhetorician and connoisseur in Art, who came to Rome (a.d. 200) in the reign of Severus, attracted by the Court of Julia Domna, who (in the words of Gibbon) was the patroness of every art and the friend of every man of genius. In his Icones he makes pictures the text of his elegant and fashionable discourse. Whether his pictures were real or imaginary is a matter of no consequence to our present purpose. The picture in which we are interested is one that represents a Meet for a Boar-hunt. The writer comments upon the well-equipped company, the horses and their riders, in the splendour of their get-up for the sport, drawing special attention to the curiosity and costliness of their horse-trappings. Their bits are silvern, and their head-stalls are decorated with gold and enamelled colours. For the production of these colours it is said that ‘the barbarians who dwell in the ocean do smelt them upon heated copper, and that in cooling they do set and harden and keep the design[20].’
It has been questioned who are meant by the barbarians in the ocean. Modern French writers have generally applied it to the Gauls; but Olearius, the editor of Philostratus (1709), understood the Keltic peoples; and certainly the expression appears more applicable to the British Isles than to Gaul. Moreover, it is in Britain, and not in Gaul, that enamelled horse-trappings have been found. Some of these may be seen in the Ashmolean, and more in the British Museum.
‘The antiquities discovered at Stanwick in Yorkshire, Polden Hill in Somersetshire, Saham Toney in Norfolk, Westhall in Suffolk, and at Middleby in Annandale, Scotland, which are all of Celtic workmanship, consist principally of bits and portions of horse-furniture of various kinds which have preserved, in many cases, the enamel with which they were decorated[21].’
The Romans or Romanized populations continued the practice of this art, and from the evidence of the finds that occur from time to time it appears probable that some of the finest specimens were made in Britain. A large flat plate, representing an altar, which was found in London and is now in the British Museum, has all the appearance of being unfinished. A curious cup, which was found at Rudge in Wiltshire, has round it the names of five of the towns on the Roman Wall. And this specimen appears, by peculiarities of workmanship, to be nearly related to the beautiful vase which was found in a tumulus on the Bartlow Hills, in Essex, where it seems to have been deposited after the time of Hadrian. And if the Saxon invasions of the fifth and sixth centuries did, as it is thought, obliterate all traces of this art in the other parts of the west, this could only have had the effect of making the practice of it peculiar to Ireland; and the Irish were not a stay-at-home race, neither did they hide their gifts from other people.
There is a Keltic aspect in the enamelled designs which was remarked by Franks, and which may have accompanied the tradition of this art even when it passed out of Keltic hands[22].
In short, all the indications which this enquiry has brought to my notice concerning the technical history of our Enamel do seem to localize it in the British Isles. At a later stage of this chapter we shall be met by evidence of a different kind, tending in the same direction.