Anglo-Saxon Pottery--Forms of Vessels, from Illustrated
MSS.--Culinary Vessels--Pitchers and other domestic
Vessels--Cinerary Urns--Cemeteries at Kingston, King’s Newton,
Bedford, &c.--Modes of ornamenting.
For examples of the ceramic art of the Anglo-Saxon period we are mainly
indebted to the cemeteries and burial mounds of that people. The art
during this period, so far as this country is concerned, was but little
practised, except, as in the Celtic period, for the manufacture of
sepulchral urns of one kind or other. Still, it is pretty certain that
many of the vessels found in the barrows were made for the purposes
of life, and used for those of death when urns were wanted. In the
preceding era the population of this country--the Romano-Britons--were
essentially a pot-producing people, and they established, as will have
been seen, extensive manufactories in various parts of the kingdom,
and made and supplied vessels for every conceivable use and purpose.
When the Saxons took possession of the country, and gradually extended
themselves over its length and breadth, they found the Roman towns,
as well as the stations and detached dwellings--nay, they found every
part of the island--well and, indeed, profusely stocked with crockery
of every kind, from the finest Samian cup and bowl down to the coarsest
mortarium and amphora, in such profusion, and in such variety, as
well as of such elegance, use, and beauty, as they had not previously
known. Fighting their way here, and settling there, they utilised the
crockery which so abundantly lay ready to their hands, and, as there
can be no doubt the Roman potters continued their works long after the
advent of the Saxons, they used these Roman vessels for all purposes,
and thus did not, except in the case of their burial urns and ordinary
domestic vessels, resembling in a somewhat striking manner some modern
utensils, leave the impress of what little taste or skill they had upon
the productions of the fictile art. The cinerary urns are, therefore,
almost, the only productions of the Saxon potter which are known.
These, like those of the Celtic period, were, there can be no doubt,
usually made in pretty close proximity to their place of burial, and,
consequently, were formed of the clays of the district. They assumed a
peculiar character, and are entirely dissimilar to those of either of
the preceding periods.
Of the forms of other vessels of the Anglo-Saxons--for there is no
doubt that coarse domestic utensils were to some extent made--a
tolerable idea may be gained from the illuminated MSS. of the time.
Some few, but very few, examples have also been brought to light, which
may with tolerable certainty be assigned to this period.
[Illustration: Fig. 222.
Fig. 223.
Fig. 224.
Fig. 225.
Fig. 226.
Fig. 227.]
[Illustration: Fig. 228.]
[Illustration: Fig. 229.]
[Illustration: Fig. 230.]
[Illustration: Fig. 231.]
The engravings (Figs. 222 to 227) showing a few of the forms taken from
the illuminated MSS. of this and the succeeding period, are interesting
examples. Some of these will be seen to owe their origin--as, for
instance, Fig. 226--to Roman design, while others are equally as
clearly Franco-Gaulish in character. The Anglo-Saxons were not, like
their Roman forerunners, an artistic race. They could not draw the form
of the human figure correctly, nor, indeed, that of animals; but their
delineations of jugs and pitchers are proved by existing examples to be
pretty accurate. Their mind, as a rule, was coarse and unpoetic as
their own beer, while that of the Roman was bright and sparkling as his
own champagne.
[Illustration: Fig. 232.--From Kingston, in the Derby Museum.
Fig. 233.--In the Norwich Museum.
Fig. 234.--Ashmolean Museum.]
The scene depicted on Fig. 224 exhibits some well-formed vessels in the
foreground, while the dinner scene on Fig. 222 shows other varieties.
For culinary purposes the Anglo-Saxons appear to have had a kind of
aversion to clay, hence their bowls were principally of metal or
wood--generally of ash, and their drinking-vessels were of horn or
glass.[28] One form of vessel, made of coarse buff-coloured clay, is
here shown (Fig. 229); and another of simple form is shown on Fig. 230.
The pottery of the Anglo-Saxon grave-mounds and cemeteries consists,
unlike that of the preceding periods, almost exclusively of cinerary
urns, and these have, as has been already stated on a previous page,
been made near the place of sepulture; and, as a natural consequence,
of the clays found in the neighbourhood. This is proved, incontestably,
in the case of the urns found at King’s Newton, where the bed of clay
still exists, and has very recently been used for common pottery
purposes.[29]
[Illustration: Figs. 235 and 236.--King’s Newton.]
[Illustration: Figs. 237 to 244.--Anglo-Saxon Cinerary Urns,
King’s Newton.]
The shape of the cinerary urns is somewhat peculiar, and partakes of
the Frankish form, which may be called degraded Roman. Instead of
being wide at the mouth, like the Celtic urns, they are more or less
contracted, and have a kind of neck instead of the overhanging lip
or rim which is so eminently characteristic of the pottery of that
period. Some, however, are tolerably wide at the mouth; but these are
usually low and shallow. The cinerary urns were formed by hand, not on
the wheel, although on some other vessels evidence of wheel-turning
is apparent. This is another proof that these sepulchral urns were
made on the spot where wanted. They are as a rule, perhaps, more
firmly fired than those of the Celtic period. They are usually of a
dark-coloured clay, sometimes nearly black, at other times of a dark
brown, and occasionally of a slate, or greenish tint, produced by
surface-colouring.
[Illustration: Figs. 245 to 247.--Mayer Museum.]
Their general form will be best understood by reference to the
engravings, Figs. 232 to 244. One of these will be seen to have
projecting knobs or bosses, which have been formed by simply pressing
out the pliant clay from the inside with the hand. In other examples
these raised bosses take the form of ribs gradually swelling out
from the bottom, till, at the top, they expand into semi-eggshaped
protuberances. The ornamentation on the urns from these cemeteries
usually consists of encircling incised lines in bands or otherwise,
and vertical or zig-zag lines arranged in a variety of ways, and, not
unfrequently, the knobs or protuberances of which I have just spoken.
Sometimes, also they present evident attempts at imitation of the Roman
egg-and-tongue ornament. The marked features of the pottery of this
period is the frequency of small punctured or impressed ornaments,
which are introduced along with the lines or bands with very good
effect. These ornaments were evidently produced by the end of a stick
cut and notched across in different directions, so as to produce
crosses and other patterns. In some districts, especially in the East
Angles, these vessels are ornamented with simple patterns painted upon
their surface in white; but, so far as my knowledge goes, no example of
this kind of decoration has been found in the Mercian cemeteries.
[Illustration: Figs. 248 to 252.]
Of the East-Anglian urns, Mr. Wright--to whom and to Mr. Roach Smith
is mainly due the credit of having correctly appropriated them to the
Anglo-Saxon period--thus speaks:--
“The pottery is usually made of a rather dark clay, coloured
outside brown or dark slate-colour, which has sometimes a tint
of green, and is sometimes black. These urns appear often to
have been made with the hand, without the employment of the
lathe; the texture of the clay is rather coarse, and they
are rarely well baked. The favourite ornaments are bands of
parallel lines encircling the vessel, or vertical and zigzags,
sometimes arranged in small bands, and sometimes on a larger
scale, covering half the elevation of the urn; and in this
latter case the spaces are filled up with small circles and
crosses, and other marks, stamped or painted in white. Other
ornaments are met with, some of which are evidently unskilful
attempts at imitating the well-known egg-and-tongue and other
ornaments of the Roman Samian ware, which, from the specimens,
and even fragments, found in their graves, appear to have been
much admired and valued by the Anglo-Saxons. But a still more
characteristic peculiarity of the pottery of the Anglo-Saxon
burial urns consists in raised knobs or bosses, arranged
symmetrically round them, and sometimes forming a sort of ribs,
while in the ruder examples they become mere round lumps, or
even present only a slight swelling of the surface of the
vessel. That these vessels belong to the early Anglo-Saxon
period is proved beyond any doubt by the various objects, such
as arms, personal ornaments, &c., which are found with them,
and they present evident imitations both of Roman forms and
of Roman ornamentation. But one of these urns has been found
accompanied with remarkable circumstances, which not only show
its relative date, but illustrate a fact in the ethnological
history of this early period. Among the Faussett collection
of Anglo-Saxon antiquities is an urn which Bryan Faussett
appears to have obtained from North Elmham, in Norfolk, and
which contained the bones of a child. It is represented in the
accompanying engraving (Fig. 245), and will be seen at once
to be perfectly identical in character with the East-Anglian
sepulchral urns. But Mr. Roach Smith, in examining the various
objects in the Faussett collection, preparatory to his edition
of Bryan Faussett’s “Inventorum Sepulchrale,” discovered on
one side of this urn a Roman sepulchral inscription, which is
easily read as follows:--
D. M. To the gods of the shades.
LAELIAE To Lælia
RVFINAE Rufina.
VIXIT·A·XIII She lived thirteen years,
M·III·D·VI. three months, and six days.
To this Roman girl, with a purely Roman name, belonged, no
doubt, the few bones which were found in the Anglo-Saxon burial
urn when Bryan Faussett received it; and this circumstance
illustrates several important as well as interesting questions
relating to our early history. It proves, in the first place,
what no judicious historian now doubts, that the Roman
population remained in the island after the withdrawal of the
Roman power, and mixed with the Anglo-Saxon conquerors; that
they continued to retain, for some time at least, their old
manners and language, and even their Paganism and their burial
ceremonies; for this is the purely Roman form of sepulchral
inscriptions; and that, with their own ceremonies, they buried
in the common cemetery of the new Anglo-Saxon possessors of the
land, for this urn was found in an Anglo-Saxon burial-ground.
This last circumstance had already been suspected by
antiquaries, for traces of Roman interment in the well-known
Roman leaden coffins had been found in the Anglo-Saxon
cemetery at Ozingell, in the Isle of Thanet; and other similar
discoveries have, I believe, been made elsewhere. The fact of
this Roman inscription on an Anglo-Saxon burial urn, found
immediately in the district of the Anglo-Saxon cemeteries,
which have produced so many of these East Anglian urns,
proves further that these urns belong to a period following
immediately upon the close of what we call the Roman period.”
The sepulchral vases found in the district of the Middle Angles vary
but slightly in form from the East-Anglian burial urns. An example
is given in Fig. 246, from Chestersovers, in Warwickshire, where it
was found with an iron sword, a spear-head, and other articles of
Anglo-Saxon character.
“If we had not abundant proofs of the Anglo-Saxon character of
this pottery at home,” continues Mr. Wright, “we should find
sufficient evidences of it among the remains of the kindred
tribes on the Continent, the old Germans, or Alemanni, and
the Franks. Some years ago, an early cemetery, belonging to
the Germans, or Alemanni, who then occupied the banks of the
Upper Rhine, was discovered near a hamlet called Selzen, on the
northern bank of that river, not far above Mayence, and the
rather numerous objects found in it are, I believe, preserved
in the Mayence Museum. They were communicated to the public
by the brothers Lindenschmit, in a well-illustrated volume
published in 1848, under the title ‘Das Germanische Todtenlager
bei Selzen in der Provinz Reinhessen.’ When this book appeared
in England, our antiquaries were astonished to find in the
objects discovered in the Alemannic cemeteries of the country
bordering on the Rhine a character entirely identical with
that of their own Anglo-Saxon antiquities, by which the close
affinity of the two races was strikingly illustrated. More
recently, the subject has been further illustrated in the
description by Ludwig Lindenschmit of the collection of the
national antiquities in the Ducal Museum of Hohenzollern, and
in other publications. About the same time with the first
labours of the Lindenschmits, a French antiquary, Dr. Rigollot,
was calling attention in France to similar discoveries in the
cemeteries which the Teutonic invaders of Picardy had left
behind them, and in which he recognised the same character as
that displayed by the similar remains of the Anglo-Saxons in
our island. Similar discoveries have been made in Burgundy
and in Switzerland, the ancient country of the Helvetii;
and it is hardly necessary here to do more than mention the
great and valuable researches carried on by the Abbé Cochet
among the Frankish graves in Normandy. It has thus become an
established fact that the varied remains of the tribes, all
of Teutonic descent, who settled on the borders of the Roman
empire along the whole extent of the country from Great Britain
to Switzerland, present the same character and bear a close
resemblance.”
[Illustration: Figs. 253 to 256.]
A few figures here given will illustrate this resemblance. Figs.
248 and 251 are two Allemannic urns from the cemetery of Selzen. It
will be seen that they resemble in form the East Anglian urns, and
the same ornamentation is also found among our general Anglo-Saxon
pottery. These urns are described as being usually made of the clay
of the neighbourhood, in most cases turned on a lathe, but many of
them imperfectly baked. They are found in graves where the body had
not undergone cremation, and were used for containing articles of a
miscellaneous description. Fig. 252 is a slate-coloured urn, procured
at Cologne, and is ornamented with circular stamps. Figs. 249 and
251 are Frankish urns, obtained by the Abbé Cochet from Londinières
in Normandy, and show at a glance the identity of the Frankish
pottery with the Germanic as well as with the Anglo-Saxon. The second
of these is surrounded with a row of the well-known bosses, which
are equally characteristic of the three divisions of this Teutonic
pottery--Anglo-Saxon, Frankish, and Allemannic. Above these bosses
is an ornament identical with that of the East Anglian urn with the
sepulchral inscription. Figs. 253 to 256 are urns from the Swiss
Lacustrine habitations, for comparison of form.
[Illustration: Fig. 257.]
[Illustration: Fig. 258.]
[Illustration: Fig. 259.]
The series of engravings (Figs. 232 to 244) will show the general and
more characteristic forms of purely Anglo-Saxon cinerary urns. Figs.
232 and 235 are of the low or flat variety, which is of not unfrequent
occurrence. Figs. 234 and 236 are also of a not uncommon form, while
240 is more uncommon. Fig. 241 is of excellent form, and is very
simple in ornamentation, having only encircling and diagonal lines, to
decorate its surface. Figs. 243, 244, and 239 are of different shape,
and so again are Figs. 237 and 240, which are almost unique in form and
in ornamentation.
[Illustration: Fig. 260.]
[Illustration: Fig. 261.]
Most of these examples are from one locality, King’s Newton, in
Derbyshire, within a few miles of the capital of the kingdom of Mercia.
The others (Fig. 232) are from Kingston, in the same neighbourhood.
Other characteristic examples of form and decoration are given on
Figs. 233 and 234. These are from the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, and
from the Norwich Museum, and exhibit excellent specimens of forms and
decoration from those districts.
The ornamentation on Anglo-Saxon cinerary urns consists usually of
encircling lines in bands, or otherwise; in vertical or zig-zag lines,
arranged in a variety of ways; of impressed or punctured ornaments; and
of knobs or protuberances. Sometimes also, as in a Bedfordshire urn,
they present evident attempts at imitation of the Roman egg-and-tongue
ornament. In some districts small ornaments are painted on the surface
with a white pigment. The marked feature of the pottery of this period
is the frequency of the small punctured or impressed ornaments to which
I have alluded, which are introduced along with the lines or bands,
with very good effect. These ornaments were evidently usually produced
by the end of a stick, cut and notched across in different directions,
so as to produce crosses and other patterns. In other instances these
impressed ornaments have been produced by twisted slips of metal, &c.
In the woodcut (Figs. 260 and 261) I have endeavoured to show two of
the notched-stick “punches,” such as I have reason to believe were
used for pressing into the soft clay, and also the impressed patterns
produced by them.
The quatrefoils (or as they may almost be called, crosses patée) on
some of the urns I have engraved, particularly on Figs. 237, 238, and
239, are very unusual, as are also those in the lower bands of Figs.
237 and 240, and in the upper band of the latter example.
Other modes of ornamenting are shown on Fig. 234.