Through a Glass Brightly: Studies in Byzantine and Medieval Art and Archaeology Presented to David Buckton

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Front cover: Gold and cloisonné enamel reliquary cross, Byzantine, around 1000. British Museum, Dept. of Prehistory and Europe, P&E 1965,6-4,1 (Photo: BM).

Contents

List of Contributors

Dr Silke Ackermann

Dept. of Medieval and Modern Europe

British Museum

London

Dr Noël Adams

c/o Dept. of Medieval and Modern Europe

British Museum

London

Donald M. Bailey

Dept. of Greek and Roman Antiquities

British Museum

London

Dr Leslie Brubaker

Centre for Byzantine and Ottoman Studies

University of Birmingham

Birmingham

John Cherry

Dept. of Medieval and Modern Europe

British Museum

London

Dr Paul T. Craddock

Department of Scientific Research

British Museum

London

Professor Anthony Cutler

University of Pennsylvania

USA

Dr Ken Dark

Dept. of History

University of Reading

England

Dr Jaś Elsner

Corpus Christi College

University of Oxford

England

Chris Entwistle

Dept. of Medieval and Modern Europe

British Museum

London

Professor Paul Corby Finney

Princeton Art Index

Princeton, NJ

USA

Professor Ian Freestone

Dept. of Scientific Research

British Museum

London

Dr Paul Hetherington

London

Dr Liz James

University of Sussex

Brighton

England

Dr Catherine Johns

Dept. of Prehistoric and Early Europe

British Museum

London

Professor Peter Lasko

Norwich

Norfolk

England

Dr Fritze Lindahl

Denmark

Dr Marlia Mundell-Mango

St John’s College

University of Oxford

England

Dr John W. Nesbitt

Dumbarton Oaks Collection

Washington DC

USA

Dr Valerie Rigby

c/o Dept. of Prehistoric and Early Europe

British Museum

London

Judy Rudoe

Dept. of Medieval and Modern Europe

British Museum

London

Dr Barrie Singleton

Morley College of Art

London

Dr Jeffrey Spier

USA

Dr Colleen P. Stapleton

Dept. of Scientific Research

British Museum

London

Hugh Tait

c/o Dept. of Medieval and Modern Europe

British Museum

London

Dr Maria Vassilaki

University of Chania

Crete

Greece

Dr Christopher Walter

Paris

France

Paul Williamson

Dept. of Sculpture

Victoria and Albert Museum

London

Susan M Youngs

Dept. of Medieval and Modern Europe

British Museum

London

Illustration Abbreviations and List of Plate Captions

Abbreviations

Plate Captions

Bibliography for David Buckton

Numerous reviews for daily and periodical newspapers, Apollo, Burlington Magazine, Friends of Mount Athos, Medieval Archaeology, Minerva, Speculum, &c., and the following:

Contributions to: Hugh Tait (ed.), The Golden Age of Venetian Glass (exhibition catalogue), London, 1979.

‘A Carolingian Ascension ivory’, British Museum Occasional Papers 10 (1980), pp. 17–24, pls 1–6.

‘The mass-produced Byzantine saint’, in: Sergei Hackel (ed.), The Byzantine Saint, Studies supplementary to Sobornost (Eastern Churches Review) 5 (1981), pp. 187–189.

Contributions to: Jacqueline Lafontaine-Dosogne (ed.), Splendeur de Byzance (exhibition catalogue), Brussels, 1982.

Great Moravia: the Archaeology of Ninth-Century Czechoslovakia (exhibition catalogue), London, 1982 (with Susan Beeby and Zdenek Klanica, 37 pp.).

‘Where on earth is Great Moravia?’, British Museum Society Bulletin, November 1982, pp. 24–27. Reprinted in Popular Archaeology, November 1982.

‘Enamelling on gold, a historical perspective’, Gold Bulletin 15 (1982), pp. 101–109.

‘The Oppenheim or Fieschi-Morgan reliquary in New York, and the antecedents of Middle Byzantine enamel’, Abstracts of the 8th Annual Byzantine Studies Conference, Chicago, 1982, pp. 35–36.

‘Vorläufige Ergebnisse einer optischen Untersuchung des Emails der Krone’, in: Ferenc Fülep, Éva Kovács and Zsuzsa Lovag (eds), Insignia Regni Hungariae (Studien zur Machtsymbolik des mittelalterlichen Ungarns), I, Budapest, 1983, pp. 129–143, Abb. 1–13.

Ernst Kitzinger, Early Medieval Art in the British Museum and British Library, 3rd edition, London, 1983 (extensively revised and partly rewritten, 127 pp.).

Founding editor of Jewellery Studies; editor of volumes 1–3 (1983–1986).

‘The beauty of holiness: opus interrasile from a Late Antique workshop’, Jewellery Studies 1 (1983–4), pp. 15–19, colour pl. I.

‘Byzantine metrology’, Bulletin of British Byzantine Studies 10 (1984), p. 27.

The Treasury of San Marco, Venice (exhibition catalogue, British edition), Milan, 1984 (ed., 337 pp.).

The Treasury of San Marco, Venice, Milan, 1984 (7 pp.).

The Treasury of San Marco, Venice (exhibition catalogue, revised North American edition), Milan, 1984 (ed., 337 pp.).

The Treasury of San Marco, Venice (English-language edition for sale in Venice), Milan, 1984 (ed., 337 pp.).

‘Necessity the mother of invention in early medieval enamel’, Transactions of the Canadian Conference of Medieval Art Historians [no. 3, 1982], London (Ontario), 1985, pp. 1–6.

‘A Byzantine coin-set pendant, AD 324–88’, National Art-Collections Fund Review, London, 1985, pp. 92–93.

‘British Byzantine institutions: 2. The British Museum’, Bulletin of British Byzantine Studies 12 (1986), pp. 32–33.

Contributions to: Hugh Tait (ed.), Seven Thousand Years of Jewellery, London, 1986.

‘Retrospection and invention in ninth and tenth-century enamel’, Abstracts of the 17th International Byzantine Congress, Washington, DC, 1986, pp. 50–51.

‘Material and method of manufacture of the early Byzantine chalice: in vino veritas?’, Abstracts of the 17th International Byzantine Congress, Washington, DC, 1986, p. 50.

‘Late tenth and eleventh-century cloisonné enamel brooches’, Medieval Archaeology 30 (1986), pp. 8–18, pls III–IV.

Ernst Kitzinger, Kleine Geschichte der frühmittelalterlichen Kunst, Cologne, 1987 (translation of the 3rd edition of Early Medieval Art (see above, 1983), extensively reworked, 176 pp.).

‘A Byzantine icon for the British Museum’, National Art-Collections Fund Review, London, 1987, pp. 84–85.

‘Byzantine enamel and the West’, in: J. D. Howard-Johnston (ed.), Byzantium and the West c.850–c.1200, Amsterdam, 1988, chapter IX; also published in Byzantinische Forschungen 13 (1988), pp. 235–244, pls I–XXIII.

‘Bogus Byzantine enamels in Baltimore and Washington, DC’, Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 46 (1988), pp. 11–24.

‘Late Anglo-Saxon or early Anglo-Norman cloisonné enamel brooches’, Medieval Archaeology 33 (1989), pp. 153–155, fig. 4.

Contributions to: Mark Jones (ed.), Fake? The Art of Deception (exhibition catalogue), London, 1990.

‘All that glisters…. Byzantine enamel on copper’, Abstracts of the 16th Annual Byzantine Studies Conference, Baltimore, 1990, pp. 64–65 (Papers in memory of Laskarina Bouras).

‘Compositional categories of Byzantine glass tesserae’, Annales du 11e Congrès de l’Association Internationale pour l’Histoire du Verre [Basle, 1988], Amsterdam, 1990, pp. 271–279 (with I. C. Freestone and M. Bimson).

Contribution (‘Enamels’) to: The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, I, New York–Oxford, 1991, pp. 695–696 (with Margaret E. Frazer).

‘Enamelled disc brooch’, in: A. G. Vince (ed.), Aspects of Saxon and Norman London, 2: Finds and Environmental Evidence (London and Middlesex Archaeological Society Spec. Papers 12), London, 1991, pp. 144–146, figs 3.24–25.

‘The upside-down enamel of Late Antiquity’, Abstracts of the 17th Annual Byzantine Studies Conference, Brookline, Massachusetts, 1991, p. 38 (Papers in memory of Kathleen Shelton).

Studies in Medieval Art and Architecture, presented to Peter Lasko, Stroud–London–Dover (New Hampshire), 1994 (co-ed., 220 pp.).

‘Theophilus and enamel’, in: David Buckton and T. A. Heslop (eds), Studies in Medieval Art and Architecture, presented to Peter Lasko, Stroud–London–Dover (New Hampshire), 1994, pp. 1–13, figs 1–6, colour pls IA–B.

‘Icons’, British Museum Magazine 18 (Summer 1994), p. 25.

‘All that glisters…. Byzantine enamel on copper’, in: Maria Vassilaki, Electra Georgoula, Angelos Delivorrias and Athanasios Markopoulos (eds), Θυμίαμα στη μvήμη της Λασκαρίvας Mπoύρα (Incense, in memory of Laskarina Bouras), Athens, 1994, I, pp. 47–49; II, colour pl. V, pls 20–21.

Byzantium: Treasures of Byzantine Art and Culture from British Collections (exhibition catalogue), London, 1994 (ed., 240 pp.).

Contributions to: David Buckton (ed.), Byzantium: Treasures of Byzantine Art and Culture from British Collections, London, 1994.

‘Byzantium’, British Museum Magazine 20 (Winter 1994), pp. 8–13.

‘Byzantium at the British Museum’, Minerva 6/1 (January/February 1995), pp. 27–30.

‘A Cretan icon of St George and the Dragon’, British Museum Magazine 23 (Winter 1995), p. 18.

‘Chinese whispers: the premature birth of the typical Byzantine enamel’, in: Christopher Moss and Katherine Kiefer (eds), Byzantine East, Latin West: art historical studies in honor of Kurt Weitzmann, Princeton, 1995, pp. 591–596.

Contribution to: Grove’s Dictionary of Art, IX, London, 1996, pp. 659–663, s.v. Early Christian and Byzantine art, §VII, 7(ii), ‘Enamels’.

‘Byzantine enamel’, Tabula 1/3 (1997), p. 3.

‘Emailarbeiten’, in: Ludwig Wamser and Gisela Zahlhaas (eds), Rom und Byzanz. Archäologische Kostbarkeiten aus Bayern, Munich, 1998, pp. 35–39.

‘The European context’, in: Andrew Middleton, Fleur Shearman, Colleen Stapleton and Susan Youngs, ‘The Guilton Brooch: the earliest medieval cloisonné enamel in western Europe?’, Jewellery Studies 8 (1998), pp. 27–36.

‘The gold icon of St Demetrios’, in: Joachim Ehlers and Dietrich Kötzsche (eds), Der Welfenschatz und sein Umkreis, Mainz, 1998, pp. 277–286, colour pl. 20.

Contributions to: Electra Georgoula (ed.), Greek Jewellery from the Benaki Museum Collections, Athens, 1999.

‘The Mother of God in enamel’, in: Maria Vassilaki (ed.), Mother of God. Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine Art, Athens–Milan, 2000, pp. 176–183; catalogue entry no. 16, pp. 298–299 (reliquary-cross); catalogue entry no. 18, p. 301 (medallion of the Mother of God).

‘The enamel of Doge Ordelaffo Falier on the Pala d’Oro in Venice’, Gesta 39 (2000), pp. 43–49 (with John Osborne).

‘Enamel’, in: Graham Speake (ed.), Encyclopedia of Greece and the Hellenic Tradition, I, London–Chicago, 2000, pp. 545–547.

‘Byzantine enamels in Bavaria’, Mitteilungen zur Spätantiken Archäologie und Byzantinischen Kunstgeschichte 2 (2000), pp. 93–105, figs 1–5.

‘Stalin and Georgian enamels’, in: Antony Eastmond (ed.), Eastern Approaches to Byzantium, Aldershot, 2001, pp. 211–218 (chapter 13).

Contributions to Christoph Stiegemann (ed.), Byzanz. Das Licht aus dem Osten. Kult und Alltag im Byzantinischen Reich vom 4. bis 15. Jahrhundert, Paderborn-Mainz, 2001 (catalogue entries IV.13–15).

‘Enamelled metal icons of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries’, in: Maria Vassilaki (ed), Byzantine Icons: Art, Technique and Technology (International Symposium at the Gennadius Library, Athens, 20–21 February 1998), Heraklion, 2002, pp. 313–18, colour pl. XXI.

In Press

‘The Holy Crown of Hungary in the history of enamelling’, Acta Historiae Artium 43 (2002), pp. 17–21.

‘Gold link with Greek inscription’, in: David M. Wilson and Signe Horn Fuglesang (eds), The Hoen Hoard, Oslo, 2003, no. 39.

‘Early Byzantine enamel in France’, Studies in Honour of Christopher Walter, Oxford, 2003.

Forthcoming

Catalogue of the Medieval Enamels in the British Museum, I: Early Medieval and Byzantine Enamel, London.

‘Brass disk with enamelled plant motif’, in Júlia Andrási, Antiquities from the Carpathian Basin in the British Museum, London.

In preparation

Byzantine Enamel, London.

Preface

Peter Lasko

In one’s University career, even after retirement, one is sometimes called upon to write references extolling as best one can, without perjury, the virtues and abilities of one’s onetime students. But it must be rare indeed to be asked to write a few words to preface a volume of ‘Studies’ to be presented to a student on the occasion of his retirement – especially as that student contributed a paper and helped to edit such a volume for me on my seventieth birthday in 1994. To be given the chance to return the compliment is a pleasure one would not normally expect.

I am deeply touched to be given the opportunity to do just that for David Buckton. The explanation in this case is that David was what must be called a ‘late starter’. When he applied for admission to the School of Fine Arts and Music to read art history in 1972, he had spent the previous four years as a staff reporter on the Eastern Daily Press. He was admitted on the strength of an interview in which he convinced me that he was determined to embark on an entirely new direction in his life. No amount of insistence on my part that a career in art history was highly uncertain, and when compared to journalism, was likely to be less rewarding in financial terms, deterred him. I cannot remember that he ever revealed to any of us in the school, why he had made that decision. Then as now, David is an intensely private person, who only very rarely, and at the most unexpected times, reveals his feelings.

Although for the first year he continued to work for the EDP, and we became aware that he was also the devoted single parent of a young daughter, he was totally committed to his studies and an outstanding student. As well as his innate academic talent, it was no doubt his experience as a journalist, which enabled him to write more coherent and better researched weekly essays than most of his contemporaries. It was no surprise to us that he was awarded a first class degree in the finals in 1975.

In 1978 he proved me wrong about the poor career prospects in our discipline I had predicted. An unexpected vacancy occurred in my old Department in the British Museum and David was appointed Assistant Keeper in the Department of Medieval and Later Antiquities. No appointment could have been more felicitous for both the Museum and for David. Not since O.M. Dalton in the first two decades of the century was an Assistant Keeper able to concentrate on the Early Christian and Byzantine collections, and grace the study of the period with as much distinction. The acquisitions made in his time, especially the enrichment of the collection of Byzantine icons which confirmed the British Museum as the National Collection in the field, stand as a permanent monument to his activities in the Department.

A tireless worker, David published a stream of articles and Museum catalogues and established an international reputation. The long series of annual enamel seminars he organised together with Neil Stratford and Susan Youngs attracted scholars from all over the world, and provided a platform for the serious discussion of problems both stylistic and technical, in an atmosphere of good fellowship unusual in the world of scholarship. His own work, always thoroughly researched, is often startling in its originality – with results that have not always been accepted universally by scholars of more conservative inclination. It will certainly be interesting to see whether his innovative suggestions will stand the test of time.

Now that David is going to be free of the burdens of official curatorial and administrative duties, we can look forward to ever increasing scholarly activities. We will, I am sure, see the completion of the first volume of the Catalogue of Medieval Enamels, covering the important Byzantine and early medieval enamels in the Museum’s collection – a catalogue that was first proposed to the Trustees as an urgent need by O.M. Dalton. No one is better equipped to write it. When it finally appears, it will no doubt fulfill all of his great predecessor’s expectations. The essays in this volume are presented to David Buckton as an expression of the regard and affection in which he is held by his colleagues everywhere.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank, firstly, Yanni Petsopoulos and Axia Art Consultants Ltd for generously contributing the cost of the colour plates, and Dr Christian Schmidt and the Society of Jewellery Historians for their contributions towards the further costs of the volume. My thanks also to Susan Youngs and my wife, Gill Varndell, for sterling assistance in the editing of this volume – all errors are needless to say my own. Finally, my thanks to David for his scholarship and friendship over many years.

Sadly, Peter Lasko, who wrote the Preface to this volume, died shortly before it could be presented to David.

1. A dandy dipper: the Ambleteuse clepsydra, Empedocles, and wine-thieves I have known

Donald M. Bailey, with an Appendix by Paul T. Craddock

The thump on the doormat of the extraordinarily heavy latest volume of the Acta of the Rei Cretariae Romanae Fautorum turned out to be fortunate in that a pottery vessel described therein inserted into my hitherto blank mind an object that I had forgotten and which could, I am pleased to say, be offered to David Buckton, a colleague of many years: a metalwork artifact, and indeed one that had been enamelled, the Ambleteuse Vase.¹

Clepsydrae and other air-pressure vessels

It is probably more than thirty years ago that I became aware of wine-thieves or toddy-lifters, while reading papers by J.U. Powell and Hugh Last on Empedocles’ remarks on respiration when observing the noise made by the filling of a clepsydra with which a child was playing.² Last decided, and I am (with many others) perfectly in agreement with him, that the clepsydra in question was not a water-clock but a device designed for the removal of a quantity of a liquid from a larger container. The technique and apparatus are slightly different from that of the pipette, used in my schooldays to suck liquids up by mouth for transference to some other vessel, but the principle is the same: a finger was placed over the top of the tube, air-pressure keeping the fluid within the device until the finger was removed; no doubt these appliances are now banned by Health and Safety legislation. The wine-thief (or water-thief, or beer-filter) was immersed in stored liquid until it had filled through piercings within its base, then a finger (or more likely a thumb) sealed an upper orifice and the toddy was thus lifted and transferred to a glass or kylix or beer-mug. Hugh Last remarks that the object that Empedocles’ little girl was playing with must be something used in a domestic context. Water-clocks were to be found, not in private houses, but in public areas, such as the courtroom, or used by the military for timing watches, and being of open tublike construction, and very heavy, could not be played with easily nor was it likely to have produced the results that Empedocles had observed. Last reminds us that in ancient literature the term clepsydra for a water-clock was apparently not used until after the death of Empedocles and the latter must have been referring to some other object.

A vessel near in shape to the Ambleteuse clepsydra comes from Upper Moesia, made of pottery with an applied vitreous glaze, found in a Hadrianic-Antoninus Pius-period grave at Viminacium, where it was made.³ It has an ovoid body surmounted by a hollow ring-shaped handle communicating with the body and with a single hole at the top; there is a low base-ring and a group of small holes within the base. The author, Tatjana Cvjetićanin, describes it as ‘of the characteristic clepsydra form’ but gives no references to other examples; she believes it to be a water-clock. However, there are in existence several Greek versions, mainly of the sixth century BC, which are near in appearance to the Moesian Roman example, and a half score of these have been collected by David M. Robinson in the third fascicule of the CVA devoted to his own collection.⁴ Robinson has a most useful discussion of these vessels, bringing together earlier views. Robinson dislikes the idea that they are sprinklers as they would not hold enough water to lay the dust on the floor of a room; and he is not happy about them being used for lustral or ritual purposes. A diagram published in 1899 by Charles Clermont-Ganneau shows one of these Greek clepsydrae being plenished by immersion in a calyx crater,⁵ and Hermann Diels in 1920 describes in detail how a clepsydra was filled and used.⁶ Robinson suggests that the clepsydra would effectively filter out the lees of wine so that a clear liquid would be transferred to a wine cup, and mentions that a Greek clepsydra would contain enough wine to fill a kylix.⁷

A bronze object found at Galaxidi in Greece, and probably of the fourth century BC, can be grouped with the vessels we are discussing. It consists of a long tube rising from a small bulbous container, the lower part of which is pierced with holes; at the very top of the tube is a double loop-handle flanking its open end. This will pick up comparatively small amounts of liquid.⁸

In 1973 Carl E. DeVries drew attention to pottery devices found in Nubia.⁹ These tend to be of smaller capacity than the Greek versions described by Robinson and are completely unlike them: some are tall, narrow and cylindrical (one of them is about 44.0cm high), others short and cylindrical, and others again are short and conical. All have a narrow neck and a flaring rim, useful for holding by the first two fingers of the hand, the orifice being covered by the thumb; all have multiple piercings in their flat bases, and all the illustrated examples come from graves at Qustol and Ballana. DeVries describes their use as liquid-lifters and points to other published examples from Nubia, from Karanog and Aniba, and a bronze version from Meroe. He believes they were used to filter out the mash floating in the beer that was the popular drink of the region. DeVries is engagingly vague as to the chronology of these Nubian clepsydrae, but they probably date from about 200 BC until about AD 200.¹⁰ Other similar Meroitic examples from Faras, also in Nubia, are cited by DeVries as being recognised in 1924 for what they were by F.Ll. Griffith, who describes them as klepsydra-dippers, together with bronze versions similar to the Galixidi version mentioned above.¹¹ DeVries is not alone in suggesting that the etymology of clepsydra came from the Greek κλέπτω (steal) and ὔδωρ (water).¹² Could the water-clock also have been called a clepsydra because in the courtroom, where counsel could speak only until the water ceased to flow, water was indeed the thief of time? Like Clermont-Ganneau before him, DeVries has found a recent manifestation of the device in an American product of the late nineteenth century or a little later, made of glass with a perforated metal base; embossed in the glass are the words ‘Dandy Dipper’.

Michal Dayagi-Mendels illustrates a narrow ovoid pottery clepsydra from sixth-century AD Israel, described as a titros, with a ring-shaped upper element similar to that of the Ambleteuse Vase.¹³

The granddaddy of them all (or grandmammy as the plastically modelled figure applied to it is female) is the beer-lifter described by Jonathan Tubb in 1982.¹⁴ Characteristic of the Taqba region of the Euphrates in north Syria, it has a flat bottom pierced with several holes and the usual thumb-closed orifice at the top. An Early Bronze IV date, c. 2400–2000 BC, can be given to it. Tubb has a very useful discussion of this type of object, and refers to a rather later example of the second millennium BC from Ras Shamra.

Designed for a different purpose, but using the same principle, where a thumb over a superior hole prevents liquid running out from inferior holes, are some northern European watering-pots for the garden, mostly of the late Medieval period, dating from the late fourteenth to the early sixteenth century.¹⁵ I am grateful to John Cherry for information on these vessels, often known as chantepleures. He also drew to my attention a very small example found in the Buttermarket at Ipswich, made in a local fabric of Saxon date produced between the mid-seventh and the ninth century AD.¹⁶ From its size this must be a clepsydra rather than a watering-pot for gardens.

Before discussing the Ambleteuse Vase, the main subject of this paper, I would like to mention two other wine-thieves in the British Museum, one completely unpublished,¹⁷ the other incompletely published.

Amongst a collection of Cypriote vases of different periods and no proveniences purchased from Thomas Backhouse Sandwith, Her Majesty’s Vice-Consul in the Island from 1865–70, is a one-handled jug-like vessel with a narrow neck, tapering and pared vertically, and a small base-ring (Figs. 1.1–1.2).¹⁸ It has a globular body, the mouth has a slight flare, and there is a series of small holes pierced through its base; it is easily held by its handle with a thumb over the hole. The fabric is buff with a very thin pale orange slip overall, except under the base. It is decorated in a dark brown fired-on ceramic colour: plain bands below the mouth, at the junction of the neck with the body, and round the base; on the lower shoulder is a band of meshing hatched triangles, flanked above and below by a single narrow line; the sides of the handle are painted, with transverse bands between them; the top of the mouth has radiating lines. Its dimensions are: H. 16.4 cm; Max. D. 11.7 cm; base D. 4.3 cm; upper-orifice D. 1.5 cm. Acquired in 1869, H.B. Walters in 1912 published it in his catalogue of pottery from Cyprus, but failed to mention the holes in the base.¹⁹ A.H. Smith and F.N. Pryce also included it in a British Museum fascicule of the CVA; again the holes are not mentioned.²⁰ Walters regarded it as falling into the early Iron Age of Cyprus, presumably sometime in Cypro-Geometric I or II, between about 1050 and 850 BC; I suspect a late Cypro-Archaic or early Cypro-Classical date is more likely, about 600–400 BC.

From its comparatively small size, toddy-lifter might well describe a vessel (Figs. 1.3–1.4)²¹ that came to the Museum in 1772 with the purchase of the First Vase Collection of Sir William Hamilton, British Ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples between 1764 and 1800.²² Owing much to the shape of Greek vase known today as a squat lekythos, it has a globular body, with a tall drawn-up neck, set off from the body by a jog, and a flaring mouth, the upper surface of which is inturned to produce a narrow orifice easily sealed with a thumb when the forefinger is thrust through the high-placed ring-handle; it stands on a base-ring within which are a large number of holes. The fabric is a micaceous orange clay, covered all over, except under the base, by a wash of thinned black-glaze medium, producing an orange-brown surface, the brush-marks showing; a small drop of black glaze has fallen on the shoulder. An attempt has been made to bore a hole in the body, causing the vessel to crack. Its dimensions are: H. 13.8 cm; Max. D. 7.1 cm; base D. 4.7 cm; upper-orifice D. 0.6 cm. It was probably acquired by Hamilton from a provenience within Italy, and its fabric suggests a Campanian source; a date in the late fifth or the fourth century BC may be attached to it.

Figs. 1.1–1.2. Cypriote clepsydra, about 600–400 BC. British Museum GR 1869.6–4.12.

Figs. 1.3–1.4. Campanian clepsydra, about 425–350 BC. British Museum GR 1772.3–20.50.

The Ambleteuse Vase

In keeping with the reminiscent nature of the first two paragraphs above, I first set eyes upon the Ambleteuse Vase in April 1966, when it was transferred in pieces to the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities from the Department of British and Medieval Antiquities of the British Museum.²³ It comprised some eight separately made bronze elements that had become separated owing to the decay of the ancient solder that had once joined them; for the vessel to work as a clepsydra it was necessary that six of these parts were hermetically sealed: two dolphins were mainly decorative, but added some strength to the whole. Through lack of foresight these constituents were not photographed separately for the Greek and Roman Department, but when the components were sent in 1990 to be restored by the Department of Conservation of the British Museum slides were taken by that department before reassembly took place (Fig. 1.5).²⁴

There are uncertainties concerning the finding of this vessel and how it was acquired by the British Museum. The entry in the Register of Acquisitions of the Department of Medieval and Later Antiquities states that it was purchased from one Mr Eastes, but someone has queried this, presumably because the object listed immediately above it, a Peruvian vase, is also said to be bought from the same person and the details for the second entry do not conform with what is normally expected from British Museum registration entries: there is also evidence for added material. No indication is given as to when the object was found, but the source given (part of the primary entry) is ‘Dredged [partially crossed out] up near Ambleteuse on the coast of Normandy, containing coins of Tacitus’. Ambleteuse is not in Normandy but on the sea coast in the Pas de Calais, between Calais and Boulogne and nearer to Boulogne. However, it seems very probable that Mr Eastes did indeed own the vase, as he sold coins of Tacitus said to be from Ambleteuse to this museum in 1838.²⁵ If the vessel was complete when ‘dredged up’ it is difficult to see how coins could be inserted; had it been dismantled somewhat to house coins it is not easy to believe that nothing was lost during dredging. If currency of Tacitus (reigned September AD 275 to about April AD 276) was actually found inside the vase, which was at least a century older than the coins, then it is far more likely that it was a hoard buried on land (the seashore?) than one lost at sea.

Fig. 1.5. The Ambleteuse Vase before restoration in 1990.

The globular body of the Ambleteuse Vase is an oblate spheroid joined horizontally at its circumference, leaving a narrow plain band between the upper and lower decorative scheme; the base is moderately tall and conical, expanding to allow it to be soldered firmly to the lower body. The upper body element is surmounted by a baluster-like portion that holds vertically a hollow ring-handle made of two elements joined longitudinally; on each side of the cusp holding the ring a duck’s head emerges. To ensure that the two parts of the ring-handle were correctly assembled a cross was cut into the archetypes or wax models (whichever method was used) at a point adjacent to the two ducks’ heads. Two diving dolphins extend from the ring to the shoulder of the vessel. At the top of the ring is a very small hole, 0.21cm across, to be sealed by a thumb. Within the base are small holes not quite centrally placed, five arranged in a quincunx and a smaller hole somewhat randomly placed. The body, the ring, the dolphins, the lower edge of the baluster, and the base all have cells for the reception of champlevé enamel. All parts of the vessel were cast separately using either investment moulds and the lost wax process or direct moulds taken from archetypes (there may have been some raising-work carried out on the upper part of the base), and it is very likely that each part went into the enamelling kiln separately before the whole vessel was soldered together. The vase is 29.8 cm high and 15.0 cm in diameter; the ring-handle is 11.3 cm across and the diameter of the base is 6.7 cm.

The body patterning is most complex, and details, rather than being described minutely, are best seen in the photographs and drawing (Figs. 1.6–1.8). The patterns match each other, top and bottom, and are arranged in twelve upper and twelve lower ‘tongues’, outlined by a series of half-moon cells; these cells are not consistent numerically with every tongue, and the upper tongues tend to have more cells than do the lower (Fig. 1.8).²⁶ The lower edges of adjacent tongues embrace a semicircular pattern containing fleurs-de-lys delimited by the circumferential plain band where the two halves of the body join: a complete circular pattern is thus produced, half above and half below the join.²⁷ At least one cell in the pattern was mistakenly omitted. Each side of the ring-handle has enamel-cells consisting of a row of rectangles divided by grooves from an inner and outer row of much smaller bullet-shaped cells running in opposite directions to each other. The baluster-finial that supports the ring-handle is plain except for a row of half-moon cells close to its junction with the upper body. Each dolphin-support is concave below the body and has deep cells on its flanks, and circular eyes, all once filled with enamel. The base has a series of vertical arrowhead-shaped cells on its sides, some of which are broken through. The lower body also has a few holes in cells, and a couple of dints; there is a small hole in a cell of the ring-handle. The castings were presumably very thin at these points.

Fig. 1.6. The Ambleteuse Vase. British Museum GR 1843.6–23.1.

The metal, having a not insignificant zinc content, is a leaded bronze of a brass-like character; a very full analysis has been made by Paul Craddock of the British Museum Research Laboratory, and this with his discussion is given in an appendix below.²⁸ Considerable traces of a black patination survives on the dolphins, the finial, the base and the ring-handle. Little, if any patination remains on the body, but it is difficult to be certain as the vase has been varnished in order that a mould be released when a copy was made in 1997. Large areas of bare bronze show through, sometimes as red cuprite. What seems to be green-coloured corrosion-products in the enamel-cells may in some case, but perhaps not all, be traces of enamel, which may once have been red. One cell on the upper body, close to the lower attachment of one of the dolphins, is filled with a green material which is very probably decayed enamel. Blue enamel certainly survives in a few cases, in one of the half-moon cells of the finial, in a cell of the lower body decoration, and a flank-cell of a dolphin. No scientific examination of these very few traces of enamelling has been undertaken. The overall enamel decoration of the Ambleteuse Vase may have been largely blue and red: when newly made it must indeed have been a ‘dandy dipper’.

Fig. 1.7. The Ambleteuse Vase: the underside.

The Ambleteuse Vase, despite being an accomplished product of a complex and decorative nature, has not been treated to overpublication, nor has it been grouped with other clepsydrae in the literature. It was apparently first published and illustrated (inaccurately) by Alfred Darcel in 1867;²⁹ it next appears with photographs in 1933 in a paper on enamel work in western Europe by Françoise Henry;³⁰ is mentioned by Mons. Meignié in 1972, with Darcel’s illustrations;³¹ and is listed with other enamelled bronze vessels by C.N. Moore in 1978.³² Only Henry mentions the holes pierced underneath; she thought they were for distributing the fumes of incense, but does not explain how the incense was introduced to a virtually enclosed vessel. Strangely, Darcel believed that only one dolphin-handle survived and his illustration shows this; he also published a segment of the decoration of the body lacking half the central floral device. This drawing emphasises the raised parts of the design, whereas Kate Morton’s new drawing (Fig. 1.8) is, at my request, concerned with the arrangement of the cells: the raised areas can be seen well in the photographs (Figs. 1.5–1.7).

Fig. 1.8. The Ambleteuse Vase; detail of one of the twelve segments of enamel-cells.

Although geographically not alone in this, areas of Late Iron Age Britain had a tradition of fine enamelled bronzes which carried on well into the Roman period, when vessels were introduced into the repertoire. C.N. Moore has argued for a British origin for enamelled skillets and perhaps for most of the other shapes, including the Ambleteuse Vase, which he mentions in his paper,³³ and it seems very likely that the skillets with the names of forts on Hadrian’s Wall are British souvenir objects. Moore thought that a southern British origin was likely, but the more recent discovery of a large number of mould fragments at Castleford in Yorkshire indicates at least one workshop was situated in the north.³⁴ The Castleford foundry, the moulds from which are published by Justine Bayley and Paul Budd, made complex, highly decorated, vessels, including costrels put together from several parts; both moulding from archetypes and investment moulding of modelled wax were used. No products of the Castleford foundry have yet been identified and none of the Ambleteuse patterns can be recognised amongst the surviving mould fragments from Castleford, except the ‘arrowheads’ found on the base of our vase, but on the latter the cells are of that shape, while at Castleford they form raised areas between cells. The halfmoon cells liberally used in the decoration of the Ambleteuse Vase do not appear in the Castleford material, and Ernst Künzl suggests that such cells are probably peculiar to a workshop which made, amongst other