Important new example of British early Celtic art. 11. First you don't see it, then you do

In 1886, John Rhys gave a lecture in which he spoke of the great smith, Culann:

"Culann is to be regarded as one of the forms of the dark divinity or Dis of the Celts, and in Greek mythology he has his counterpart in Hephaestus, excepting that, owing to the departmental narrowing of the latter's characteristics, Culann  was somewhat wider; for he was not only smith, but diviner and prophet, the owner of herds and flocks, and of a Cerberus that guarded his house and chattels until it was killed by Cúchulainn."

Cúchulainn means 'the hound of Culann' -- Cúchulainn took over the dog's protective role for Culann until it could be replaced by another of the same age and breed.

Diodorus had written: "The Gauls are terrifying in aspect and their voices are deep and altogether harsh; when they meet together they converse with few words and in riddles, hinting darkly at things for the most part and using one word when they mean another..." (V, 31)

These accounts have shape-shifting as their theme, whether by the use of metaphor in speech or through the seamless blending of the sacred and the profane in the roles of Culann. The material world, with its defined compartments did not exist. Mythos and Logos was a scale where everything was played in the middle and that is as strange to us as its modern terminals of false/true would be to them. In their manner of thinking, they foreshadowed the included middle of transdisciplinarity. They lived in quantum realities.

In recent years, there has been talk of magic in references to the Celtic smith, but this is often understood as the "magic of the forge" -- the transmutation of a metal from one state to another. In all that we have seen, so far, there is no indication of the celebration of metal -- quite the opposite, the old is disposed of or hidden out of sight. What is both celebrated and emulated is the shape-shifting aspects of part of the Plastic Style spectrum -- the anamorphosis.

Let us assume that the finial is, as I believe it to be, a sword pommel. As its owner catches a glimpse of it from a random angle in battle, or examines it in detail by the light of a fire, various images of the view are reflected in his mind -- as the well-known forms of a monster face, a palmette or a cusp. We can only speculate what these images mean, but he knew. We can tell that by their repeated use in the evolution of the art -- they were part of its vocabulary and it was a visual language. From these images that play in his mind he discovers things about himself and his relationship to his universe. The pommel acts like an oracle and its magic is attributed to the skills of its maker who, like Culann, communes with the sacred.

So why would the transmutational magic of the forge be mentioned when this came from the hammer and graver? Its influence came from alchemy, especially that of the Elizabethan time. C. G. Jung, after many years of study, came to realize that the transmutation that took place within the Vas Hermeticus and the crucible was  a metaphor for the real transmutation -- that of the alchemist himself into a higher state. Jung based his psycho-therapy and his psychological theories on that study and it was eventually published as Mysterium Coniunctionis (Collected Works of C.G. Jung Vol.14) . Jung came to realize that alchemical symbolization reflected the contents of the unconscious just as mandala symbolism did. His patients, with no contact to alchemy or eastern belief, were manifesting this symbology within their dreams and the paintings they made and also, the metaphors were preserved in these structures so that he could successfully treat them. In a nutshell, the mind detects transmutation and equates it to alchemy.

Using the traditional ways of showing the past can hinder us thus with Celtic art. We like to have top, front and side views of things in order to study them -- but what they have to say to us only comes from the eccentric view. We like to regionalize and make distribution maps, but this only recovers the physical landscape and not the mental one. An artist might be sixty years old and creating what is currently popular, yet there are elements in his work that hearken back to his training forty years earlier. These elements do not show up in the work of his main rival, as he is only thirty years old, but they are both capable of creating the "fashionable" out of what they have -- even though their work reflects their personal lives. We might think of examples of each coming from different periods if we are not vigilant. We have to start thinking of people making things and not imagining that these things emerged from regions and periods through some sort of parthenogenesis. The ideas came in the minds of individuals -- real people who moved from here to there for entirely logical and personal reasons. Trade cannot transmit meaning with the object, or the method of its manufacture. Trade is sterile.

Next time, "Monsters in the finial"

Important new example of British early Celtic art. 10. The psychology of plasticity

In part four, I gave a link to an art history paper: Anamorphosis and the Eccentric Observer by Dan Collins. In reference to the early Renaissance, and giving the standard dating of our day, he says: "The appearance of anamorphosis as a consciously applied technique in the history of art is nearly simultaneous with the invention of linear perspective." After realizing that the early Celtic art Plastic Style not only used anamorphosis but used it in ways yet to be expressed since, I could say that not seeing the ancient Celtic application was an oversight and leave it at that. But, rather than engaging with useless trivia, I thought it might be interesting to see if there is something about the spirit of the Renaissance that we could equate to the La Tène. After all, those Renaissance artists thought that they were originating the technique and were not reviving a Classical tradition.

As his title indicates, Collins has brilliantly identified the Eccentric Observer as the subject of this process. He says:

"The gymnastics necessary for the successful apprehension of the anamorphic image casts the observer in an active role in which the conventional relationship to the object of vision is literally thrown "off-center." To observe anamorphic images, one must be an "eccentric observer," that is, an observer who is not only a bit "eccentric" in the usual sense of the term (i.e. "strange")--but an observer who is willing to sacrifice a "centric" vantage point for the possibility of catching a glimpse of the "uncanny" from a position off-axis. While the term "eccentric observer" could be viewed as an elision of Arnheim's terms "eccentric" and "centric" (which he employs to describe "compositional forces" at work in visual art), I am suggesting the "eccentric observer" as, simply, an alternative to the usual model of a viewer occupying a central position with respect to the material world. An eccentric observer is exactly the observer of the anamorphosis, an observer who literally "stands apart" and is self-aware of the process of seeing."

It seems reasonable to look for this eccentric observer  in the La Tène period and to focus, of course, on the Plastic Style. We could do no better than to consult Jacobsthal.  Paul Jacobsthal is something of a paradox. On one hand, he represents the conservative structure of the subject: the division into types of objects; classification through named styles; the use of comparison of design elements, and so on. Yet on the other hand, he is the originator of the subject and the conservatism was expressed afterward, by those who found his methods useful. The subject, itself, is very recent -- Jacobsthal published his text in 1944.

Jacobsthal says:

"The Plastic Style is Janus-faced: on one side tree and berry forms, on the other a new, very original calculated plasticity. In addition, the 'Cheshire Style' revives the masks of the Early Style, but gives them a far more uncanny look. Certain plastic forms are possibly a revival of Hallstatt forms. Despite increased connexions with abroad, migrations of tribes, and bodies of fighting men or single mercenaries active in the South and South-east of Europe, there are no longer any loans: by now the Celts were saturated with foreign forms. There is much unrest and a baroque, deeply unclassical note in this style: I do not hesitate to see in it the culmination of Early Celtic art: ἔσχε τὴν αὑτῆς φύσιν." p. 162.

While Collins connects linear perspective with the methods of those artists engaging in anamorphism, Jacobsthal refers to the uncanny, the baroque and unrest as impetus for the style. He is essentially describing the mind-set of the observer -- in fact the eccentric observer as Collins describes.

So what connection can we then make between the Italian Renaissance and the La Tène period?  The former marked the beginning of much international cultural exchange and it developed further with the importation into Italy of ancient ideas from such cities as Alexandria and Istanbul where not all ancient knowledge had perished in the fires of their famous libraries long ago. It became fashionable to be interested in magic and alchemy, and the wealthy were buying up all sorts of imported manuscripts (many of them spurious).

Perhaps it is a coincidence that the La Tène owes so much to northern Italy -- When the massive Celtic armies started setting up their bases in that region, the area had already been visited by their forefathers as far back as the Golasecca culture. The Etruscans certainly embraced the cosmopolitan and it was not so strange for an Etruscan woman to marry a Celtic man with their family then pursuing a Greek life-style. Most of the forms of Celtic art which evolve later were adopted in Italy and many of these forms were, appropriately, brought there by artisans from Asia Minor. The strangeness of the Plastic Style -- its "baroqueness" might have been an introduction by the Boii, who had a large base there. The tribe was well traveled and their name later gave us the place name 'Bohemia' -- the eastern end of the Plastic Style distribution.

 Next time, the role of magic in the Plastic Style.

Important new example of British early Celtic art. 9. Ripples in the pond

One of the first things you notice when you start looking at British early Celtic art is its rarity. Not only are there very few objects that display the Celtic art of the warrior elite, but most of these objects: the shields, helmets, sword scabbards and horse and chariot fittings display a wide array of sub-styles -- we might see these sub styles as the work of specific workshops. This dearth of material gave newcomers to the subject the idea that the warrior elite were few in number, but when we see some of the most spectacular objects, and each exhibits a developed and clearly evolved style that is mostly typical only to itself then the idea of only a few elite falls apart. Think, for example, about the maker of the Witham shield. How many objects would have to be made in order to gain such mastery of the material? How many years of the workshop's operation would be financed by this shield? Yet, all we have from the maker of the Witham shield is the shield. What of the owner's rivals? -- He must have had some to warrant such a display of finery. Where are their trappings of power? We know that the Witham shield had been improved upon by the addition of the bronze work it now displays. An earlier version had a boar appliqué, visible now only by the rivet holes. A few objects show signs of repair over time but there did not seem to be any great tradition of preserving heirlooms and, in the few lavish warrior graves that have been discovered, the finds are pretty well contemporary.

Necessity forces us to get the most out of the material that we have. In the case of the Plastic Style finial, stylistic concerns, alone, were not enough to positively attribute the object. It required an electron microprobe analysis to prove its British manufacture. Now, I would have loved to have compared the analysis of the finial with the analyses of some of the objects I have used here. Was the Witham shield a relatively local product or was it made from the west-country alloy? The styles of the two Wandsworth shield bosses are completely different -- is this difference true, also, for their alloy? In looking for comparisons, I could find nothing more than the few antiquities and the greater number of coins with which Peter Northover had to work. Of course, to do a proper electron microprobe analysis a small area on the object must be polished down to bare metal -- the electrons do not penetrate enough to reach beyond layer of even the slightest  corrosion. Many collectors see this polished area as damage -- lessening the value of the object. I did not polish an area of the finial blithely, but I knew it had to be done. This was an object smaller than an inch on its longest side. It is difficult to find areas on such an object where this polishing will not show, but if I did not polish it then I could not prove its origin. I would have gone about taking a tiny sample from the Witham shield with greater gusto. Who would ever notice a piece missing that was not much bigger than 50 microns on such a large object? Yet no one has analyzed the shield thus. Why would that be?

So where is the rest of the stuff? Dozens, if not hundreds of objects as splendid as the Witham shield must have been made, and the numbers of ordinary barely decorated examples must have been in the thousands. Yet we have three relatively complete shields in total. Bettina Arnold has excavated an important clue. I do not know who originated the title of one section heading in that article, but "dapper dudes and biker chicks" says it all. The material, scant as it is, reveals a warrior elite. History records that the Celts had a number of private armies always available for hire. For nearly three hundred years, these armies terrified the inhabitants of the Mediterranean, they captured Rome and held it for ransom; they worked for tyrants and kings -- Dionysius I of Syracuse even loaned a Celtic division to the Spartans. There were stories going round (perhaps spread by the Celts themselves) that these Celts would kill all the children and rape all the women. Ptolemy Keraunos, the son of Ptolemy I of Egypt, evidently had not read about the Celtic ransom for Rome (which Rome could not afford and which was financed by Massalian businessmen, according to Trogus). For when he found himself in a similar position, he mistook the Celts demands for terms of their surrender negotiations. When the Celts stopped laughing about this, they decorated one of their spears with his head.

Imagine a modern "yuppie". He would not be seen dead in a five year old car. If his wardrobe was not recently seen on the fashion runways of Paris, Rome or New York, then something is very wrong. Of course, he would have all of the latest gear in all areas of his life. His image is the "front window" of his business. He entertains lavishly and is seen distributing largess at all of the top charity functions. His status is measured by such things. Were you to look for an ancient equivalent, you could do no better than to pick a the leader of a private Celtic army. Who would hire such a commander if he presented an Iron Age "Don Quixote" image with outdated and rusty armour? Whatever was old and outdated went back to the melting pots -- everything had to be current.  It was not so much to gain on the metal sale that the old was recycled -- it was mainly to keep the old from being seen. Most of the finest examples of British early Celtic art, and most of what I have discussed here, were river offerings. That is what had saved them from the melting pots. They could not be seen below the water.

If we find one example of the British Plastic Style, we can safely assume that at least hundreds more had existed. we can also safely assume that such objects were "the latest thing", because aspects of their designs were incorporated into engraved or chased line decoration -- even details that have not survived in example other than on an artist's bone flake "pattern book" in Ireland; because more extreme forms of repoussé were developed and used in warrior finery. They were trying to replace the Plastic Style cast three-dimensionality with other methods. The first crude experiments were essentially two dimensional drawings on a surface that fixed the viewpoint of the object depicted. This method eliminated everything of oblique anamorphosis -- something the best artists flaunted in their work and was clearly a bitter pill for them to take, for the technology moved to compensate. The path these changes took is murky for we had several workshops all progressing somewhat differently.

Eventually, the shapes that had been engraved lost all of their inner detailing and were preserved as abstract outline -- sometimes with a simple fill pattern. With this formalization of design, and as a contributing factor, attention was given to the shapes of the spaces between the design elements, and these became specific shapes in their own right. Thus the imaginary view could change between the foreground and the background giving a mental variety of oblique anamorphosis reminiscent of the work of M. C. Escher. The ultimate development was the British Mirror Style just before the Roman conquest. Even these late objects carry the "genes" of the British Plastic Style which vanished more than two hundred years earlier. The mental anamorphosis also expressed in some mirrors, like the Desborough Mirror, in the form of the woman's head that peers back at us from within the design.

The next episode is a surprise!

The Desborough Mirror

© Trustees of the British Museum

Important new example of British early Celtic art. 8. The finial -- space and function

View from the side and below

As the composition of the finial is an elaborate triskele, one might expect that the base above the ferrule would reflect this shape -- perhaps being a rounded triangle as a transition to the circular ferrule. In fact, the base of the triskele section is approximately circular in outline, with no leanings toward a triangular form. The transition from three-sided to circular takes place, subtlety, entirely within the Plastic Style decoration. From the base of the decorated section, the ferrule has a short waist which then flares out to the diagonally reeded edge of the (now filled) socket. The reeding is very rounded and this accents the Plastic Style of the decorated section.

The finial is, most likely, a sword pommel. Early sword pommels are extremely rare, most of them having parted with the sword long before the sword was found. The commonest sort of pommels are much later and are the head section of an anthropormorphic sword hilt consisting of head and arms at the end, an undetailed body section which is simply the grip, and the legs, which take the position of quillons. Sword pommels were lost frequently and the makers were always attempting new methods of attaching them to the sword. One of them in my own collection has an indented side -- made to rest against one of the arms, and there is a small hole bored in one side of the top of the head, presumably to accommodate a locking tab that forms part of the arm. The female ferrule had an internal design reminiscent of a Phillips type screw save for the fact that one arm of the cross is set lower to gain greater stability. Yet, that pommel was also lost from its hilt -- a reminder that soldering or welding was unknown at the time and that necessity is not always the mother of invention. The most elaborate anthropomorphic sword pommel of which I am aware is this one.

Kirkburn Sword

© Trustees of the British Museum 

The Kirkburn sword (left) is an earlier sword that is complete with hilt and scabbard and shows a small, but simple pommel. This sword might be fifty to a hundred years younger than the Plastic Style example. The decoration on the scabbard is of formal style, executed as pure decoration with no attempt to mimic actual objects as was done with the line work on the round Wandsworth shield boss.

Sword pommels are the sort of object that were always getting lost from the sword, as we can see from the elaborate attempts that the craftsmen made to overcome this problem. As this was, evidently, a stray find (also typical for much British metalwork of the time, as is mentioned in most of the texts on the subject), Occam's Razor would suggest that the object is a sword pommel and not, say, the finial from a small box. The evidence of an internal iron tang or pin also supports this hypothesis. The next episode will focus on the place of this object within the evolution of British early Celtic art.

Important new example of British early Celtic art. 7. Influences - The Witham shield

The Witham shield

© Trustees of the British Museum 

The Witham shield is the work of a master metal smith. The shield furniture, consisting of the bosses and connecting spindle is all of one-piece construction. As a high status object, it displays the best of the fashions of the day and will thus serves us very well as a comparison piece.

It contains examples of the snail coil, the boss decoration of three curved lines, and linear decoration. It belongs more with the long Wandsworth shield boss than with the round example as they both utilize high relief repoussé work instead of the low relief work of the round boss which used the technique, largely, to outline the masses.

We could say that it thus does not need two dimensional line work to convey the idea of three-dimensional objects, so we would expect the line work  to be of a completely different class. We are not disappointed in our expectations for the line work makes no attempt to represent the three dimensional. In fact, it takes  the traditional ivy-scroll decoration which, even if portrayed with high realism, would still be of very low relief and it transforms it to a fully two dimensional pattern which reflects the best scroll work designs in insular early Celtic art.

Detail

© Trustees of the British Museum 

The linear designs can be seen in the detail above, around the umbo and on the spindle. This class of scabbard design can be seen on some of the Irish scabbards from Lisnacrogher,and  the River Bann and on various other objects from England and Ireland. The defining characteristic being the presence of tightly wound spirals in the ivy scroll derivative pattern. While I would like to illustrate some of the Irish sword

Bronze knife from St. Albans showing tightly wound
spirals in a formal two dimensional composition

© Trustees of the British Museum 

scabbards, no useful images are available on the web, presumably because some museums use such images commercially and do not believe in open access. So, instead, I illustrate this bronze knife from the British Museum, thanks to their enlightened free- use policies.

The knife is useful for our purposes, also, because its form shows the same water-bird head that we saw on the round Wandsworth boss, but the linear decoration is just as formal as those which appear on the Irish swords. The artist saw no need to use this technique to mimic three-dimensional effects.

Amfreville helmet, 4th Cent BC.
Amfreville-sous-les-Monts, Eure department, France
photo:  Siren-Com source: commons.wikimedia.org

The linear decoration of the Witham shield, the St. Albans knife and the Irish scabbards is distinctively insular and finds no close parallel on the Continent, but the ivy scroll decoration is sometimes referred to as the "Marnian scroll" from its frequent appearance on objects made in the Celtic workshops around the River Marne in France. The most famous example of this ivy scroll decoration can be seen on the left on the Amfreville, helmet.

While the Witham shield is a masterpiece, not all British examples of the ivy scroll are as successful as the Amfreville helmet. This schematic of the linear design on the Standlake scabbard illustrated as Figure 16A here, just does not have the balance in design that we see on the helmet.

On the Witham shield, the triple curved line motif on the bosses can be seen as the eyes on the animal's head that is depicted on the top of the spindle. In most accounts, the species is left to the observer's perception, although it is sometimes described as a horse or an ox. Personally, I see it as a stag's head with the decoration around the boss serving as a reference to the antlers. A very similar boss exists on the Tarn armring that I illustrated in part 3, but that particular motif is not visible in the photograph. It can be seen, however in Jacobsthal, Plate 275 (top). The snail coils on the Witham shield can be seen directly above the animal's head in the illustration.

In summation, at this same time period, we can see two distinctly different classes of linear decoration in insular Celtic work: that like on the round Wandsworth boss which attempts a two-dimensional interpretation of three-dimensional objects and which exhibits lower relief  repoussé work and the formal two-dimensional ivy scroll of the Witham shield which is accompanied by high relief  repoussé work. Not all examples of this higher relief work show any linear decoration, as the Wandsworth long shield demonstrates.

In the next episode, we will examine the use of space in the finial.

Important new example of British early Celtic art. 6. Influences - Another shield boss from Wandsworth

Wandsworth round shield boss

© Trustees of the British Museum 

Although this second Wandsworth shield boss does not contain a cast or repoussé snail coil it is included here because of its importance for this part of the discussion. The repoussé work is not saved for the high relief area as was accomplished on the long shield boss, instead, it is used mainly to outline the decoration. The design focuses on two opposed water-birds in flight and the more ambitious repoussé work is saved for the bird heads. We can assume that the large central umbo presented far less of a challenge than the rest of the design -- which is in low relief.

The important details, for our discussion, are the linear decorations which can be seen within some of the repoussé shapes, including on the umbo. I believe that these decorations are used to translate designs seen in the Plastic Style casts onto a two dimensional "canvas".  It would seem most likely that the workshop which produced the finial was no longer in operation when this shield boss was made. However, large objects in the Plastic Style are unknown -- even on the Continent, so such an ambitious project as a shield boss was most likely impossible any way. Thus, on the complete shield, cast details in the Plastic Style could have existed. They certainly existed on the Witham shield (including snail coils) -- the object we will cover in the next post.

Linear decoration within the bird motif
© Trustees of the British Museum 

The linear decoration shown on the right is contained within two cels of the bird's body. At the top, two opposed sets of what appear to be linear representations of relief trumpet fluting are brought together within a composition that shows some influences from the earlier Celtic split palmette designs. Below, and to the left, we see these double trumpets used throughout the three part composition which would only need a boss at each end to imitate the composition of the finial.

"Seeing horses in the clouds" is a common malady among those with an interest in early Celtic art, and it was something of which the artists working in the Plastic Style took full advantage. But this is not proof of intent, so we need another example on this same piece to demonstrate such proof in a clearer manner. Now, I would not be mentioning any of this if I did not already know of the existence of such proof, would I?

Linear design around the umbo
© Trustees of the British Museum 

The diagram on the left, from the linear design around the umbo shows a double motif which also incorporates the paired trumpet flutes, but the proof that this is a two dimensional representation of a three dimensional object is provided by the small circles, each of which encloses diamond shapes with recessed curved sides. This design is mostly encountered with only three sides, as a boss decoration (as will be in the the Witham shield decoration), but a four-sided variety is to be found on a bone slip from Lough Crewe, Co.Meath, Ireland (Jope Plate 364,o).

Detail  © Trustees of the British Museum

Another detail is shown on the right. While the left-side motif might be considered rather clumsy in its composition in the centre area, this problem is resolved by imagining it to be a two dimensional planar representation of the type of 90 degree shifts in the spatial alignment as is seen on the finial. It also incorporates elements of the low-relief repoussé bird, so it is clearly using a two dimensional schematic to represent three dimensional subjects. The right side motif appears to show how space can become twisted in an almost M. C. Escher manner!

In the next installment, we will compare instances where linear designs are used which do not represent the three dimensional, and where the composition does not also exhibit the apparent clumsiness necessary for such a task. After looking at such examples, the differences between the two purposes will become obvious.

Important new example of British early Celtic art. 5. Influences - Wandsworth long shield boss

 Although there had been no discovery of any object in the Plastic Style in Britain prior to the find of the finial, we can see the influence of the style in some of the earlier British examples of early Celtic art. To start this series of examples, I have chosen those objects which display the snail coil which I illustrated in part three. The element of the armring from the Tarn displayed only very simple bosses with a central bead and the masses which lead to each boss became very narrow at the point which they met the boss. The snail coil is a later development where the boss absorbs the mass which connects to it making for a smoother transformation between the two elements.

The clearest influence from the Continental Plastic Style is the long shield boss from Wandsworth displayed below.

Wandsworth long shield boss. © Trustees of the British Museum 

Wandsworth long shield boss. The mask.

© Trustees of the British Museum 

The detail on the left shows the mask at the top of the shield boss. The repoussé work showing the snail coil eyes is mostly missing because the metal had to be raised so high that it became very thin and thus too susceptible to destruction through corrosion. The shield, originally, would have such thin areas backed with pitch to protect them from accident. As this was found in the bed of the river Thames and was most likely a votive offering, it was perhaps just the bronze covering, stripped from the shield, that was offered.

A very close parallel to this detail can be found in the masks on five Plastic Style terret rings from Mal Tepe, Mezek, Bulgaria. The similarity is uncanny: the shield and the terrets even have the slight linear detailing of the tip of the nose.

Dating systems vary. Jope, op. cit. places the Wandsworth boss in the mid 2nd. century BC, but the Megaws, op. cit. dates it to "?2nd/1st c. BC." and the Mal Tepe terrets to "earlier 3rd c. BC." I think it most likely that both objects date to within a single generation and think that the dating of the terrets might be pushed forward a bit and the shield boss backwards from Jope's estimate. This would place both objects in the second quarter of the 3rd century BC. The shape of the nose on the Wandsworth mask can also be compared to the shape of the mass that connects the two simpler bosses on each element of the Tarn armring, so it would seem that this object might well be somewhat earlier than the both the mask and the terrets. The Megaws, ibid., however, give "?LT B2/C1, late 3rd c. BC" for the armring.

In the light of the knowledge provided us from the British Plastic Style finial, I can propose a new theory about the blossoming use of extreme repoussé in Britain. Consider this view of the Wandsworth shield boss:

Side view.  © Trustees of the British Museum 

We can favorably compare the raised details above the domed shape of the boss with the raised masses and the negative spaces between them on the finial. At the bottom of the photo, a damaged boss -- likely a snail coil, has a trumpet-like mass curving off to the left where it terminates in a leaf-shape. This is similar in its arrangement to the simple connection of the two bosses in the element of the Tarn armring and closer still, to the elaboration of the same on the finial between the top snail coil within the triskele shape, and the side yin/yang bosses. Complex masses on the Plastic Style are cast and not worked up in repoussé. Of course, with such a large object as a shield boss, these details could hardly be cast, and so repoussé was used in a more extreme manner than it had been used before in British early Celtic art. This impetus was, in my opinion, a way to mimic the complex casting technique using extreme repoussé work; to translate the fully third dimensional space, by necessity, to the more two dimensional space of masses raised above the background "canvas". But this is not the only type of example of this urge as we will see in the next object to be discussed.

Important new example of British early Celtic art. 4. Oblique anamorphosis

The illustration on the left shows two overlays drawn to clarify the oblique anamorphosis. The left side reveals the typical "monster" face -- in this example, a bug-eyed goldfish; the right side showing a Celtic two-dimensional composition with elements previously used in early Celtic art. Above the yin/yang boss, is a palmette derivative and a cusp outside of that, at the 2 o'clock position. No other example is recorded of such a case of  the transformation of three dimensions into two in early Celtic art.

The illustration on the right shows a different face of the finial where one can see the "monster" as having two eyes, or a combination of the "monster" and the linear pattern. Both of these views are dependent on the viewpoint of the observer. For example, the cusp is actually the upper surface of the trumpet, its mouth being transformed into the lower leaf of the palmette.  in the case of the view of the "monster" with both eyes, the left eye is the snail-coil boss of the top of the finial, while the right eye is one of the yin/yang bosses of the side of the finial.

Oblique anamorphosis has been thought to be an artistic creation of the early 15th. Cent. AD. Modern artistic use of the phenomenon has yet to produce a truly sculptural example like this one where an actual object (the finial) can be transformed by the mind into something very different. The fact that the transformations are both from 3D to 3D and from 3d to 2D is unrecorded at any period, to the best of my knowledge.

The various "monster" faces which peer out at the observer on some examples of the Plastic Style on the Continent have been designated the 'Walt Disney' style by Ruth and Vincent Megaw in Celtic Art -- From its Beginnings to the Book of Kells, Thames and Hudson, 2001, p. 139ff. where they say of the examples cited: "All demonstrate a particular type of abstraction of human and animal heads which, since it shares with modern cartoonists the ability to produce immediately recognizable forms by the economical use of pattern, may be dubbed the 'Walt Disney' style".

Yet, all of these Continental designs consist of deliberately created and detailed faces -- they are not solely a phenomenon of observation as is the face on this finial. The work of this master had an influence on British early Celtic art right down to the 1st Cent AD, and Chris Rudd points out some hidden faces in the abstract design on a gold coin of Tasciovanus.

We should also ponder the nature of this metamorphosis in the minds of the creators of this British development to the Plastic Style and their clients. Although focused, of course, on later art, this paper by Dan Collins, Associate Professor of Art, Arizona State University, investigates the compositional and psychological meanings behind the applied phenomenon. 

Important new example of British early Celtic art. 3. Motifs and elements

The first step in studying a newly discovered example of early Celtic art is to find other published examples to which it can be favorably compered. As it is the decoration that is important and not so much the form or type of object, any sort of object might be used providing it contains similar motifs and elements. An element is a single shape and a number of elements can be grouped together to make a motif -- essentially, a picture of something. These terms are not absolute: in a complex design, what might be called a motif (if we were studying it isolation) would consist of different elements that together make up the complete motif. So for a complex design, each discrete shape can be called an element even if it contains elements of its own when described in isolation.

Armring, River Tarn, France. Late 3rd Cent BC. 

Image courtesy of Prof. Dorothy Verkerk,
University of North Carolina.

The first object I have selected for comparison is the bronze armring from the River Tarn in France. Not only does it contain a motif (triskele shape) used in the composition of the finial, but it serves as the geographically closest example of the Plastic Style to the finial.

Detail of armring showing triskele

(same photo credits)

The snail-coil central boss corresponds to the small

boss in the arming detail. The curved triangle shape

surrounding the snail-coil equates to the raised

mass surrounding the small boss of the armring.

The corners of the triangle are not the end of the

design, but show where the triskele shape turns 90

degrees downward to form the main shape of the

finial, itself.

One of the most remarkable features of the finial is the fact that the artist has taken this triskele motif and has changed its spatial dimensions. What could be described as a bas-relief decoration on the armring, becomes transformed as the main shape of the finial, itself.  The top of the finial becomes the central design of the triskele as in the illustration to the left.

This transformation of the space of the design does not exist on any Continental example of the Plastic Style of which I am aware and appears to be a British innovation. What seems to have happened is that at the end of the Continental Plastic style, one of its workshops moved to Britain and continued the style there, developing the style even further. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Plastic Style not only moved to Britain, but it influenced the direction that early Celtic art would take in Britain. Many examples of this will be revealed in the study.

The most important innovation expressed in the developed Plastic Style was an ability to create very complex three-dimensional castings that went far beyond simple castings that gave a bas-relief effect only. This must have seemed almost magical to the metal smith's clients and would have seemed more amazing to everyone than the invention of 3D scanners in the modern world. There can be no doubt that the method was a trade secret and that it was lost with the death of the master or his heir just a few decades after he first arrived in Britain -- but this matter must wait for a later installment.

The following chart shows how each limb of the triskele equates to the Tarn example once it is translated back into two dimensional space:

1 shows the top of the finial. The "corner" of each point of the curved triangle travels down the side of the finial (2), then curves back upward (3) terminating in the boss at the end (4). Thus, the composition of each limb of the triskele on the Tarn detail (above) is represented here in this exploded view. What, on the armring, is a smooth gradation between the central boss and the terminal boss becomes two distinct masses that are smoothly connected on the finial -- the ridge (2), and the trumpet (3). These masses and the negative spaces between them become very important design elements in their new three dimensional space as we will discover in the next installment.

Important new example of British early Celtic art. 2. The British metal

I first learned of the special nature of some British copper alloys through J. P. Northover, Materials issues the Celtic coinage, in: Celtic Coinage: Britain and Beyond, ed. Melinda Mays, British Archaeological Reports (BAR) British Series 222, Oxford, 1992. In this paper, Peter Northover also compares his coinage metal analyses with the analyses of other objects -- especially from archaeological excavations and/or where the dating of such objects can better inform of the dating of the coins where such information is not available or where there might be alternative hypotheses about such.

The key to understanding the British manufacture of the finial comes not so much from the alloy, but from the ratio of the impurity elements of cobalt and nickel. On pps. 261f, Northover says (referring to the Thurrock potin coin type):

"The composition is of a bronze with an important cobalt impurity, with Co>>Ni and with iron, arsenic and silver as the other significant impurities. This impurity pattern is highly characteristic of metalworking in southern Britain in the La Tène Iron Age, and can almost certainly be associated with a copper source in south-west England, that is the metal itself is British in origin. ...Analysis of some cauldrons at La Tène itself showed the same bronze type in association with iron of potentially British origin. The high cobalt impurity bronze is uncommon in most periods so there must be a strong presumption that it was exported from Britain. ...The location and nature of the Thurrock hoard must also lead us to suspect that the potin coinage was a product at least of Essex as well as Kent. However, the bronze type is more characteristic of the south-west than the south-east although it circulated there as well."

Long after the above paper was published,  Dean Crawford, an English metal detectorist and Dobunni tribe specialist discovered an as yet unpublished site in southern Worcestershire, which also yielded a number of Thurrock potins. The site was duly reported but has yet to be excavated by archaeologists. The site contained Dobunnic silver coins as well as the potins (and also later finds down to the last part of the 2nd century AD. suggesting metal recycling had taken place there at least at a later date than the original coin deposition.) 

The coins appeared to have been cast deliberately in a scatter on the original surface of the ground (Crawford, pers. comm.). It was not a plow-scattered hoard. There was also evidence of feasting with a large number of animal bone remains. Dean sent me a representative collection of the metal finds, including one of the Thurrock potins which I had analysed at a U.S. commercial XRF  lab. The Co/Ni impurity was recorded as well as the other significant impurities of Fe, As, and Ag all being within the same ranges as Northover gave for his four analyses of the Thurrock potins.

The nature of the Thurrock potins is currently being revisited by Mark Fox of Michigan, and the first part of his research is published in this month's issue of The Numismatist (American Numismatic Association), p. 37-43.

There can be no doubt, whatsoever, that the metal content of the finial belongs in this British alloy type. The only important difference being that the finial had lower levels of tin -- but like other artifacts in this alloy group, it is bronze and not potin. In fact -- even taking the averages of the Co content, it is slightly higher than is cited for the metal type by 0.003% in this element.

Finally, this analysis gives material confirmation of Martyn Jope's statement on page 1 of his Early Celtic Art in the British Isles about the primary development of British early Celtic art:

"The initiating stimuli for this rise evidently came from Europe, yet at the crucial time, the fourth to third centuries B.C., we can point to practically no imported pieces that might have served as potential exemplars; the new ideas and skills must have come largely in the minds and hands of men with a considerable experience in distant ateliers."

It is to the memory of Martyn Jope, that this installment is dedicated.
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