A large number of small enamelled objects, from little bowls to brooches, have been found in Britain. The art of enamelling was known here before the Roman age, but objects having several colours seem to be “Roman,” although there are Celtic characteristics in the patterns, and it is agreed that there was a native manufacture (British Museum Guide, p. 95) of such enamels. The finest piece is a “casket” in the form of a little vase with a handle. This handle has turned-up ends of a kind frequently found in Alexandrian silverwork. One of the bands of enamel is a meandering stem and vine leaves. This beautiful object was found in Essex, and there is in the British Museum another little enamelled bowl also found not far from London, at Braughing, Hertfordshire. The details in these two pieces are very similar, so are those of a little enamelled cock found near the Royal Exchange. Notice the use of long triangular forms and narrow saw-edged fillets. It seems probable that all were made in London, and further evidence is found in a remarkable enamelled plate taken out of the Thames (Fig. [146]). This “being an unfinished piece, was probably made in this country”—and city, I would add. In colouring and technique this plate (probably part of a memorial) is very like the objects already mentioned. A leaf form on it which ends in a tendril is found also on the Braughing bowl; both these pieces might have come from one shop. The type of ornament is remarkably Celtic. In the Guide it is said that “debased Amazon shields can be recognised, and Riegel has pointed out that the panel is not a unit, but belongs to a larger all-over pattern which could be repeated indefinitely, and reveals an artistic tendency of the later Roman Empire.” I do not agree with either of these statements. The pattern seems to me to have been designed as a reversed scroll pattern, subdivided by setting down oval forms in the spaces to counterchange the colour in a typically Celtic manner. In the diagram (Fig. [147]), A is the pattern type; B is the application to the space; C is the subdivision of the spaces completing the design. In D and E, I have made an original design on the same principle. Other details in the filling of the space at the top are Celtic. Notice again a heart-shaped form at X. This form is frequent in small seal-boxes, several of which have been found in London, of which F is from one lately added to the Guildhall collection. It is probable, I think, that such enamels were made in London by Celtic artists. An enamelled harness plate found in London and illustrated by Roach Smith is like others found in Somersetshire (see G). A small brooch in the form of a fish at the London Museum may be early Christian.
Leadwork.—Britain was the chief source for lead in the later Roman era. Of about a hundred and twenty Roman pigs of lead in the museums of Europe, about half were of British origin, as appears from the inscriptions. Cast sheet lead was used for coverings. Some actually in position was found lining the bottom of the hot bath at Bath in 1864. It was afterwards sold for £70! Mr. Irvine, in an article on the Corinthian temple at Bath, assumes that the roof was covered with lead. He says that the sheet lead found in Bath was about three-eighths of an inch thick and showed that it was cast on a sand-bed. Melted lead was found at St. Albans under conditions which suggested that it had come from the roof of the Basilica. We may be satisfied that lead was used for important roofs. Lead pipes are also found.
Many lead coffins have been found in and about London—about a dozen in all—and they were doubtless made in the city. The fashion of using lead coffins seems to have originated in the Romanised East about the time of the recognition of Christianity, and those found in London follow the general type very closely. I give in Fig. [a]148] a rough sketch made in Constantinople twenty-five years ago of a lead coffin found at Sidon. Another coffin from Sidon has recently been acquired by the British Museum. Figs. 149, 150 and 151 are from coffins found in London.
Fig. 148.
Fig. 149.
One discovered many years ago in South London, illustrated in Archæologia, vol. xvii., had on it two little figures like Minerva—probably Britannia. Another found at Sittingbourne, recently set out for exhibition at the British Museum, has little Medusa heads and pairs of lions watching a vase (Fig. [152]).
Fig. 150.