- Museum number
- 1975,1002.2
- Description
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Lower area from a bowl in thin sheet silver, elaborately decorated with repoussé worked from the outside (inside decoration in relief). The vessel is very damaged and there are about fifty fragments from it. The base is slightly dished, and the profile is slightly incurved towards the top, probably with a small, plain, upright or everted rim. Two suspension rings and fragments of chain belong to the bowl. The rings have overlapped ends, like many late Roman finger rings. One, the smaller, is riveted to a portion of the plain rim. The rivet is decorated with a seven-petalled rosette. The zones of decoration of the bowl, from the rim downwards, are: (1) astragalus border between dotted lines; (2) zone of four rows of leaf-tips in scale-pattern; (3) astragali between dotted lines; (4) deep zone of circles with dotted borders, containing five central dots, divided by (a) upright leaf-tips, and (b) opposed peltae with leaf-tips (once only); (5) astragali between dotted lines; (6) as 4, except for pelta motif; (7) three rows of astragali; (8) herringbone pattern; (9) astragali.
- Production date
-
3rdC (?)
-
4thC(early) (?)
- Dimensions
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Diameter: 180 millimetres (c.)
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Diameter: 23 millimetres (suspension rings)
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Height: 100 millimetres
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Weight: 220.40 grammes
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Thickness: 2.50 millimetres (suspension rings)
- Curator's comments
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Bruce-Mitford 2005
Discovery and history: Discovered in 1975, as part of a hoard of late Roman silver in a field on the site of the Roman town of Durobrivae. Proclaimed Treasure Trove.
Description: Bowl of thin silver, very light and delicate, with elaborately faceted, repoussé and punched decoration. Badly damaged, it is now restored. Two silver rings were found. They were held to the rim each by a riveted loop of silver. The rivet-head seen on the exterior has simple decoration. It is thought that there were originally three rings not two, and the bowl (on exhibition in the British Museum) is suspended from three rings, one a modern restoration in perspex. The bowl had no escutcheons and is not (Laing, L.R., 1993, 'A Catalogue of Celtic Ornamental Metalwork in the British Isles c. A.D. 400-1200', IBAR British Series 229, Oxford, Nottingham Monographs in Archaeology 5, 22) in two parts, but beaten up from a single sheet of metal, and lengths of silver chain were attached to surviving rim. The base was very lightly dished.
Associated finds: Part of a hoard of Roman early Christian silver, including many pieces decorated with Chi-Rho monograms.
Discussion: The decoration was clearly intended to be seen only from below and completely covered the whole base and exterior surfaces of the bowl. Two very similar bowls occurred in the Chaourse Treasure (dated to c. A.D. 270). Another bowl of thin silver, of the same size and shape and with analogous decoration (with circles instead of faceted circular surfaces) is in the Coleraine Hoard, Londonderry, buried probably in A.D. 406-8 (Smith, R.A., 1922, 'A Guide to the Antiquities of Roman Britain in the Department of British and Mediaeval Antiquities', London, 73).
For discussion of Roman hanging vessels of various types see Appendix 6 (Bruce-Mitford 2005, page 81), ‘A note on the Water Newton silver hanging-bowl and other Roman hanging-vessels', by K. S. Painter.
Bibliography: Johns in Painter, K.S. (ed.), 1977, ‘The Water Newton Early Christina Silver’, London, 11-12, pl. 4; Baker et al. in Painter 1977, 25-6; Johns, C.M. and Carson, R.A.G., 1977, The 1974 Water Newton hoard, in Painter 1977, 27-8.
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This bowl was made by raising with frequent anneals. The surface was then scraped, using a lathe to rotate the bowl, after which the decoration was introduced, using a series of different sized punches. A chain made from wire which had not been drawn (in the modern sense) but possibly hammered or swaged from a strip of sheet, was attached by means of a decorated rivet.
The same kind of ornament punched in from the outside is found on a number of types of bowl of the third century AD. In the Chaourse Treasure, dated about AD 270, there are two bowls so similar in shape and decoration to the Water Newton example that they may even have been made in the same workshop. It is thought that all the thin silver vessels with punched ornament of this type imitate the appearance of contemporary glass-ware. Conclusions to be drawn from the presence of the rings attached to the rim and from the interpretation of the decoration are that the Water Newton bowl was meant to be suspended and that it was the outer surface, not the inner, that was intended to be looked at.
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Silver hanging lamp
This decoratively faceted lamp is made from very thin silver sheet, with suspension rings at the rim. It was found in numerous fragments and painstakingly reconstructed. The lamp was designed to be seen from below and was possibly made to imitate glass bowls with cut facets. An example in dark-green glass was found in a 4th-century grave at Horrem in Germany.
Although its exact function is not known, the fact that it was designed to be hung from a chain suggests that it was a hanging lamp. It would have been used for burning beeswax or tallow to provide light.
P&E 1975 10-2 2
- Location
- On display (G49/dc18)
- Exhibition history
-
Exhibited:
2006 31 Mar-29 Oct, York, Yorkshire Museum, Constantine
2005 14 Mar-30 Oct, Woodbridge, The National Trust-Sutton Hoo Exhibition Centre, Hanging Bowls
1996 30 Mar-13 Nov, Italy, Rimini, Sala dell’Arengo, Dalla Terra Alle Genti
1989 23 Jun-31 Aug, Durham, Durham Cathedral Treasury, The Anglo-Saxon Connection
- Acquisition date
- 1975
- Department
- Britain, Europe and Prehistory
- Registration number
- 1975,1002.2
