WHEN A HELM IS A CROWN

Absolutely beautiful!

THE SAXON SMITHS

Incredible work in any age or epoch …

Secrets of the Staffordshire Hoard: Skills of the Saxon smiths revealed

Nov 21, 2014 Features 0

---

The Staffordshire Hoard is a glittering reminder of the creative talents of the Anglo-Saxons – but now a pioneering research project is revealing that their skills were more far sophisticated than previously imagined, as Carly Hilts learned. 

When the Staffordshire Hoard was discovered in 2009 (CA 236), the exquisite artistry of its contents immediately captured the public imagination, vividly demonstrating the creative powers of Anglo-Saxon goldsmiths. Now, however, a pioneering research project (undertaken at the British Museum and funded by English Heritage) has revealed that their techniques were more sophisticated still.

New analysis, examining the gold content of over 100 pieces from the hoard, as well as other Anglo-Saxon objects, has revealed that Early Medieval craftsmen were using complicated chemical techniques to enrich the outer surface of golden objects, transforming their appearance to that of items made from much purer metal.

Revolutionary research

Most of the objects that we call ‘gold’, whether ancient or modern, are in fact made using alloys containing copper and silver (for example, 18-carat gold is 75% gold and 25% other metals). The gold worked by Anglo-Saxon smiths was no different, and as part of the ongoing programme of research and conservation being carried out on the Staffordshire Hoard, metals expert Dr Eleanor Blakelock carried out a pilot study on 16 objects to examine their composition.

After using a Scanning Electron Microscope to analyse the surface of each object, pinprick-sized areas of the surface were then scraped away to reveal the core. When comparing these results, she noticed a marked difference: the gold on the surfaces of the objects was much purer, with much less copper and silver present.
These surprising findings prompted a wider project, involving another 98 hoard objects, as well as 36 Anglo-Saxon items from the British Museum, and one from the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in the largest study of its kind ever undertaken on Anglo-Saxon gold. In many, the same pattern appeared. Why?

When buried, copper tends to leach out of alloys naturally, affected by surrounding soil conditions, but silver does not. For such a disparity in an object’s silver content to exist – in some cases the pieces have a core composition of 25%-50% silver, but only 6%-10% silver on the surface – Eleanor argues that this suggests the silver was being deliberately removed from the outer surface in order to make the objects look more golden.

Closely guarded secret?

Such an intricate process may have been a closely guarded secret among Anglo-Saxon goldsmiths – certainly no description of how it was achieved has survived from the period – and for now its details remain obscure.

Eleanor suggests that the technique may have been similar to cementation, a process sometimes used in modern metallurgy, wherein a salt bath of iron-rich minerals (for example, Roman tile dust) is heated, producing acid. This causes the silver in any gold alloy placed into the bath to separate and rise to the surface. Metal treated in this way initially looks dark and pitted, but it burnishes to a beautiful golden hue.

Many of the most famous objects from the Staffordshire Hoard seem to have been enhanced in this manner, including the front of the folded cross, as well as many of the filigree-decorated sword pommels, and gold surrounding cloisonné garnet work, such as on the ‘sword pyramids’ and the set of fittings for a single-edged seax blade.

All that glitters…

Does this suggest that crafty goldsmiths were manipulating the surface of their creations in order to cheat their patrons by passing off lower quality material as pure gold? Not necessarily: in some cases the silver content seems to have been reduced for artistic reasons, particularly on objects decorated with filigree, such as the sword pommels and the pectoral cross. Here their backing sheets have been enhanced, but the delicate patterns of gold wires soldered onto them have not, creating a striking colour contrast.

These findings also have important implications for how Anglo-Saxon objects are dated, as previously an artefact’s surface gold content was often used to help establish its age. This is because a lot of Anglo-Saxon gold is thought to have its origins in recycled Continental coins, which became much less readily available in Britain after the 630s-640s, when incursions by the Islamic Caliphate into the Levant wreaked havoc on the economy of the Byzantine Empire. If, as this study suggests surface composition is not an accurate indication of an object’s actual gold content, whole swathes of material may need to be revisited.

Splendid new display

These findings were announced this October at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery’s launch of their new Staffordshire Hoard permanent displays (funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and Garfield Weston). Previously housed in a small room where only a small number of key pieces could be shown, now about 70% of the 4,000 hoard fragments have been spread across long tables that explain how the unique collection is being conserved, and explore the latest findings. As this story is still developing, the displays are designed to be flexible, allowing pieces to be moved in and out as required by researchers, and for information to evolve as new developments emerge.

‘People will be learning about the hoard with us,’ said Conservation Co-ordinator Pieta Greaves.

This aspirational attitude is seen throughout the gallery: at one end of the ‘research table’, boxes of unidentified fragments form a pyramid that the team hope will gradually shrink as bits are matched and rejoined. Pieces of an ornate helmet have also been mounted on a Perspex head in an optimistically large box – with work on the hoard’s decorated silver foils planned to start in the New Year, the team hope to identify more fragments soon.

Meanwhile, other areas explore the hoard’s international story: the likely origin of its raw materials, and the cultural influences visible within its artwork. Elsewhere, a reconstructed meadhall – a structure that lay at the heart of the elite warrior culture reflected in the hoard – brings matters closer to home, introducing Anglo-Saxon England (and a crash-course in the Old English language). Star objects form the culmination of the displays, in an enclosed area dubbed ‘the Treasury’. With artefacts spotlit in this shadowy space, and a deep red lining, the showcase creates the feel of being inside a jewellery box.

From its outset, work on the hoard has been a collaborative effort, something that the new gallery is keen to reflect – there is no single curatorial voice here. Rather, video screens introduce the thoughts and theories of a host of ‘talking heads’, from archaeologists and conservators to the hoard’s finder, Terry Herbert, and visitors to previous exhibitions on the finds.

Above all, the space is filled with the excitement of an ongoing process of discovery, where, as we have seen from the latest tranche of research, the new questions arising from the research are in many ways just as important as the answers being revealed.

THE ANGLO-SAXON WAY

The Anglo-Saxon War-Culture and The Lord of the Rings: Legacy and Reappraisal

By

Medievalists.net

– October 26, 2014Posted in: Articles

 The Anglo-Saxon War-Culture and The Lord of the Rings: Legacy and Reappraisal

By Pritha Kundu

WLA: War, literature, and the arts, Vol.26 (2014)

Introduction: The literature of war in English claims its origin from the Homeric epics, and the medieval accounts of chivalry and the crusades. In modern war-literature, produced during and after the two World Wars, themes of existential trauma, alienation of man as victim, horrors of the nuclear warfare and the Holocaust, and the evils of a totalitarian government, critique of narrow nationalism have become dominant; yet some memories of the Classical and the Medieval war-culture can be found, either as subtle allusion, or as a means of irony or satire, as in Catch-22 or Mother Courage. However, another ancient culture of war—that of the Anglo-Saxons—has failed to hold its sway over the thoughts of the modern war-poets and novelists. In fact, the process of oblivion began as early as the 12th century, when the image of loud and boasting warriors, bursting the mead-halls with their genial laughter, and fighting to death for the love of their lords, was replaced by the courteous Christian knights on their quest for the Holy Grail, rescuing damsels in distress, representing abstract virtues and ideals of a feudal culture. In the long run, the medieval image of the knight-warrior, alongside the raw and ‘real’ quality of the Homeric battles, has found ways into the modern imagination, and produced modern reappropriations of these old materials, whereas re-works on Anglo-Saxon literature are of a poor amount. John Gardner’s Grendel offers an existentialist and psychoanalytic approach to Beowulf, rewriting it from the monster’s point of view, and G.K. Chesterton’s The Ballad of the White Horse recalls the tone of sadness and lament in the Old English elegies, but none of them shows interest in the war-culture of the Anglo-Saxons, which, notwithstanding the ‘fantastic’ elements of monsters and dragons, remained so realistic in the battles themselves, and a strong bond of love and duty between the warrior-king and his thanes.

Considering the scarcity of the Anglo-Saxon influence in modern war-literature in general, one may wonder and stop by a work like The Lord of the Rings or Silmarillion, which few would be willing to categorise as serious war-literature. The fictional writings of J.R.R. Tolkien are said to have revived the genre of fantasy and magic-realism, and they have been readily assimilated into the new genre of popular literature. What seems to have been forgotten in this process is Tolkien’s own passionate and critical engagement with the war-literature of the Anglo-Saxons, which has gone into the making of his otherwise ‘fantastic’ creation of the ‘Middle Earth’. Tolkien’s lecture, later published as an essay, “The Monsters and the Critics”, brought a formative and seminal change in the course of Beowulf -criticism. His fictional works are at the same time holding the Anglo-Saxon legacy with devoted fondness, yet his reappraisal is of a critical kind—it critiques, reconstructs and reappropriates several Anglo-Saxon themes and ideas while constantly referring back to an old war-culture passed into oblivion…