Closely akin to this jointed collar in the idea of its construction and the form of its ornament is an elegant armlet of thin bronze (Fig. [113]), found in 1826 near Plunton Castle, in the parish of Borgue, in Kirkcudbright. It is of thin beaten bronze, 1½ inch wide and 2½ inches in diameter, and, like the collar, it is made to open on a hinge in the centre, and close by a pin and loops. It is ornamented by three raised mouldings, beaten up from the back, which pass round it horizontally, but these are concealed on either side of the hinges by two plates of thin bronze of quadrangular form, ornamented in repoussé by trumpet-shaped ornaments connected by peculiar curves, and having studs placed in the concavities of the curves. These plates are fastened to the armlet at the four corners by pins, and bordered by a single row of small studs.
Fig. 113.—Bronze Armlet found in the Parish of Borgue, Kirkcudbright.
In the month of March 1806 a herd boy, passing along the side of the Shaw Hill, near the House of New Cairnmuir, in the parish of Kirkurd, Peeblesshire, saw something glitter in the ground, and on scraping the place with his foot he unearthed a hoard of gold objects, consisting of two twisted arm-rings, each weighing 8 oz. 12 dwt., a broken ring of the same form weighing 8 oz. 10 dwt., forty small studs, each weighing about half a sovereign, and a hollow spherical ornament weighing 4 oz. 5 dwt.—the bullion value of the whole being about £110. One of the twisted arm-rings passed into the possession of Sir George Montgomery of Macbiehill; the spherical ornament and two of the small studs were obtained by Mr. John Lawson of Cairnmuir and placed in the National Museum; the rest of the hoard is believed to have been melted. The three arm-rings are spirally twisted rods of gold, with flat circular ends bent round to encircle the arm. The studs or pellets are nearly spherical, about the size of a large pea, and marked on the surface with a cruciform ornament in relief. The spherical ornament (Fig. [114]) has some resemblance to the pommel of a sword, although its form gives no obvious indication of its purpose. It is 2½ inches in length by 2 inches in width, and about 1¼ inch in thickness. It has been cast hollow, with an opening through the centre of the rounded part, and must have been made by a very skilful workman. One side of it is plain, the other ornamented in repoussé work of great beauty. The style of the ornament is simple, elegant, and highly effective. The surface to be decorated is broken up into irregular spaces by a system of the peculiar curves, which are so characteristic of the style of art of the bronzes which have been already described. Some of these spaces are further ornamented by a peculiar pitting of the surface seen in some of the decorated stone balls (Fig. [146]); others are raised in solid curves of the same peculiar form, while the interspaces follow the form of the object itself. Studs and prominences, with spirals in relief, are introduced to give emphasis to the general design, which commends itself at once to the eye of taste as one of the most fitly beautiful and unaffected forms of surface-decoration which could be applied to such a purpose.
Fig. 114.—Gold Ornament found on the Shaw Hill, near Cairnmuir, Kirkurd. Front and back views (actual size).
In this group of objects in bronze and gold we have characteristic examples of the work of this early school of decorative art, which in some of its features bears certain relations to the work of the later school of Celtic art of the Christian time. But the elements of its decoration are fewer. It has no interlaced work and no fret—nothing but curves and spirals. It does not systematically break up its surfaces in panels, but distributes its decorative effects in spaces that are circular or oval, or bounded by intersecting curves. Its prevailing features are not the production of intricately symmetrical and geometrically regulated patterns, but the production of effects of balance and beauty by the rhythmic recurrence and variation of curves and spaces with solid forms which, though not symmetrical, are similar. Their characteristic curves, as seen in the outlines of their figures and the sections of their solid forms, are specially peculiar, while the marked preference for relief in metal-work is in striking contrast to the general prevalence of chased and engraved designs in the later school.
It is to this characteristic treatment of the decoration of their metal-work by this early school of Celtic art that Mr. Kemble refers in the following remarks:—“When, as is often the case in metal, this principle of the diverging spiral line is carried out in repoussé—when you have those singularly beautiful curves, more beautiful perhaps in the parts that are not seen than in those that meet the eye, and whose beauty is revealed in shadow more than in form—you have a peculiar characteristic, a form of beauty which belongs to no nation but our own, and to no portion of our nation but the Celtic portion. It deals with curves which are not arcs of a circle; its figures are not of the class we usually designate by the term geometrical; and above all it calls in the aid of enamel to perfect its work—not cloisonné like the enamel of the East; not mosaic work of tesseræ like so many so-called enamels of the Romans, but enamel champléve as Philostratus has described the island barbarians to have invented it. The engraved spiral line, with double winding, is found from America to the Baltic, from Greece to Norway, but the divergent spiral repoussé in metal and ornamented with champléve enamel, is found in these British Islands alone.”[alone.”]
I now proceed to notice another group of objects in metal possessing peculiar features still more strongly marked, but exhibiting also the distinctive characteristics of the same style of art.