Fig. 104.
The method of dividing up the wall space with strips of plain colour or with “pilasters” was very general. A simpler scheme was to have marginal borders only, and these were frequently of considerable width, made up of many bands and lines of colour. Dadoes were very general, sometimes only a plain band of colour or a horizontal bar running into the margins; at other times they were fully decorated: two examples lately illustrated in Archæologia, from Caerwent and Silchester, are really fine work. The latter had a row of “panels,” alternating square and round, set with leaves and ears of corn, on a red ground between dark top and bottom bands.
Stripes and Margins.—A piece of wall of considerable height was found at Bignor, having a quadrant skirting at the bottom, a plain dark band as a low dado, and the space above divided into panels. At Cirencester a fragment was found which showed a band of fair yellow, edged with margins of white separating spaces of a cool grey-green. At the Society of Antiquaries is a piece of plaster showing fine red and green spaces, divided by a white band and a black line—very simple, but beautiful colour (Fig. [105]).
Fig. 105.
Of a great number of fragments in our museums one cannot determine if they only represent margins or whether they may have come from vertical strips. A piece of plaster from Silchester shows a broad band of red, then two white lines separated by one of black, and then a surface of grey, except for other thin black lines. A piece of plaster at the Guildhall had a dark green band, probably 3 in. or 4 in. wide, then a strip of rather transparent crimson 1½ in. wide, finished against a yellow line, then an interval of white 1 in. wide, followed by the green again 1¼ in. wide and a yellow line, then 2 in. of white and a single yellow line followed by a white area. This was certainly a margin, and here we get an example of a method of gradating the border into the general field. In 1785 “some large pieces of painted stucco” were found in Lombard Street (Archæol. viii.). Drawings made at the time are in the Guildhall library. A piece was banded green and black, with the addition of thin marginal lines. Two of the pieces were from borders having lines with additional touches. One had merely groups of comma-like hooks springing from the line
, and the other, little fleur-de-lis forms on a white band edging a bright blue space. These were, I think, coarser variants of the treatment shown in 6, Fig. [a]104]. The margins were sometimes “shaded” like mouldings; there are one or two examples of this treatment at Silchester.
Pilasters.—In some cases the ornamental vertical strips may not have been contained within pilaster-like forms. A fragment in the British Museum, which has an umbrella-like calyx to a number of springing stalks, may be one of these (Fig. [106]). It is on a brown-red ground, and there are some other small fragments with leaves on a similar colour. The cast-shadows make me think that it was independent of a pilaster. The colour and workmanship appear very similar to the festoon of foliage from Southwark, described below; probably such uprights usually upheld festoons. The head rising from a calyx illustrated by Roach Smith came from another similar vertical composition (8, Fig. [a]104]). Two small pieces at the Guildhall represent a similar upright (Fig. [107]). Again, in the British Museum is a very simple vertical upright, something like a prolonged ear of corn (9, Fig. [a]104]).
