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British Artefacts. Volume 1, Early Anglo-Saxon - Brett Hammond
Greenlight Publishing - Essex, 2009. 308pp Paperback, £15
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| British Artefacts. Volume 1, Early Anglo-Saxon |
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This book is a colour photographic catalogue of early Anglo-Saxon artefact types, focusing on metalwork. Hammond aims the book at a popular audience and specifically at metal-detectorists and collectors. The book begins with the mistitled section ‘Introduction to the Early Anglo-Saxon Period’, which actually outlines advice about finding, buying, collecting and valuing early Anglo-Saxon artefacts. This is followed by a disappointing and hyper-traditional account of early Anglo-Saxon history (‘Outline of the Early Anglo-Saxon Period’) in which Gildas’ writings are attributed to the end rather than the beginning of the 6th century AD; Bede is implausibly called a ‘careful scholar’ who painted a ‘vivid picture of life in early England’; and the poem Beowulf is incautiously claimed to have 6th century origins. Even a brief summary of early Anglo-Saxon archaeology would have been a useful addition.
When Hammond gets into his element he provides a competent and readable introduction to early Anglo-Saxon metalworking and ceramic production. This is followed by a superbly straightforward introduction to the established styles of early Anglo-Saxon metalwork. The real value of the volume, however, is the catalogue. The text here is detailed and descriptive and artefact dating is discussed in broad terms. The functions of artefacts are also fully reported and the possible religious meanings of the animal art receive attention. The text is accompanied by useful distribution maps. For each artefact type there are superbly reproduced and accurately scaled colour photographs of the finds; the first time I believe any book has done this for early Anglo-Saxon artefacts. Moreover, some of the artefacts depicted are clearly recent metal-detector finds, published in colour for the first time. Others are from museum collections and many of these too have not appeared before in colour. There are also line-illustrations from existing publications. A disappointing lapse seems to have occurred in that none of the images are referenced for their provenance or context of discovery. Equally, the book does not acknowledge museums or collectors for image rights. These errors will presumably be rectified in future volumes of the series.
I have two further critical comments about the book. First, the contexts in which artefacts are found and the process of their discovery are downplayed. Even when a ‘grave-group’ is discussed (pp. 107-108) the text fails to make clear to the reader that these artefacts tell us most about early Anglo-Saxon society and culture when excavated scientifically within stratified contexts, usually graves but also from settlement sites. The book also tends to downplay the colossal contribution made by responsible metal-detector users who chance upon Anglo-Saxon contexts that have been damaged or destroyed by ploughing, and who will carefully plot the location of finds and report the discovery to the Portable Antiquities Scheme. Sadly, numerous early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries have been ransacked by nighthawks and information lost when artefacts are not reported and are sold on without reporting or provenance.
Second, the series title is called ‘British artefacts’, and yet the Introduction to the Series’ reveals an explicit bias by claiming the books ‘will show the developing “material culture” of England’ and highlighting the ‘immense importance in the story of the nation’ and ‘English history’ of the Anglo-Saxon period. Like some other recent popular histories of early Anglo-Saxon England, this patriotic statement is worthy of the days of early Victorian Teutonism! As the book’s distribution maps clearly show, ‘early Anglo-Saxon England’ means areas of Germanic-style burials, settlements and artefact types found in only some parts of southern and eastern England. Other areas in the south and east, most of western and northern England, and all of Wales and Scotland in the period AD 450-650 have produced either no evidence or very different archaeological traces that are not discussed at all in this volume. Perhaps the series needs to be re-named ‘English Artefacts’, or else a subsequent volume addresses Britain for the period AD 450-650?
There may be more detailed introductions available for early Anglo-Saxon burial and settlement archaeology as well as studies of early Anglo-Saxon art, crafts and costume. Yet as a popular and visual introduction to the range of early Anglo-Saxon metalwork, this book is a most welcome first and an invaluable guide. |
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To Wake The Dead - Marina Belozerskaya
W.W. Norton - New York and London, 2009. 308pp, frontis, 26 b/w illus. Hardback, £17.99
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In 1421, Cyriacus Pizzecolli, now better known as Cyriacus of Ancona, was a 30-year-old book-keeper of limited education who seemed an unlikely saviour of the past – yet that is what he became.
It was Trajan’s Arch in his home city that set him upon that road. He had passed the landmark almost daily since childhood, but he began to examine it in detail. He had no knowledge of Latin but recognised Trajan’s name. It set him wondering about the past and the places and ancient monuments he had already seen in his young life while he travelled the Mediterranean on business for merchants.
Hardly any of his contemporaries took any notice or indeed had any time for these ancient relics, but Cyriacus was suddenly fascinated, and resolved to begin documenting what he saw. He wanted not only to record the monuments but to look beyond them for what they could tell of past ages. His passion for antiquities was to bring him into contact with the scholars, artists and rulers of the Renaissance. Many of them were to use his discoveries and records as inspiration for their own work. Cyriacus could count Popes and both Byzantine and Holy Roman emperors amongst those he came into contact with.
His travels and ready acceptance in business around the Mediterranean fed his obsession, for so it became, for preserving the material remains of classical cultures. They also led him on to other paths, acting as a papal spy and tirelessly campaigning for a Crusade against the Ottoman Turks to bring his beloved monuments in the east under European control. Truly he pioneered the science of archaeology. His own account, Later Travels, based on his detailed letters to friends and clients, is a mine of information that records a past and its monuments that have often long since gone.
As the Renaissance got under way, the scholars and humanists began to look to the past, and Cyriacus’ records, particularly his drawings, were often their road into it. The scholars stayed ensconced in their libraries; it was Cyriacus who brought rare and costly books and manuscripts back to them from the Near East, especially from Byzantine Constantinople and monasteries.
He was the first traveller since antiquity to observe and record the monuments of Athens, where he spent two weeks in 1436, and it is to him that we owe sketches of the Parthenon before the disastrous explosion of 1687 all but destroyed it. He saw and drew Hadrian’s remarkable villa at Tivoli long before the site was ravaged of its sculptures.
This is a fascinating account, often in his own words, of a man whose obsession with the past gave it a future into our own times. |
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Egyptian Fakes. Masterpieces That Duped the Art World and the Experts - Jean-Jacques Fiechter
Flammarion - Flammarion, Paris, 2009 (Distributed in North America by Rizzoli) 248pp, 220 colour & b/w illus. Hardback, £22.50 ($45)
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| Egyptian Fakes. Masterpieces That Duped the Art World and the Experts |
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First published in French in 2009 as Faussaires d’Egypte, this book is a fascinating compendium of many of the greatest forgeries of Egyptian art. It begins with a brief treatment of Egyptian forgeries produced in ancient times by the Phoenicians and Romans, and of 17th and 18th century forgeries brought back by early European travellers to Egypt. The 19th century brought about a prolific trade in fakes. Many of these entered the major museums, which were then amassing their first collections. By the late 19th century, skilled forgers sold a number of well executed pieces, which would not be condemned until many decades later. One of the treasures of the British Museum, the New Kingdom limestone statuette of Queen Tetisheri, acquired by E.A. Wallace Budge in 1890, was not unmasked by the curator W. V. Davies until 1984. A late 19th century forger also produced excellent black stone copies of the dignitary Rahotep in the posture of a scribe, one of which was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1924 and condemned by the museum’s curator Henry Fischer in 1978.
When, in 1928, the Met announced the acquisition of the gold treasures of the foreign wives of Tuthmosis III, partly by excavation and partly by purchase from dealers at Luxor, they did not realise that the three gold goblets inscribed with the names of the princesses were the work of forgers. These were condemned following studies made between 1972 and 1983. The famous painted limestone bust of the 18th Dynasty Queen Ahmose-Nefertari, with its leopard head-adorned garment, was purchased in 1926-27 by James Henry Breasted for the Chicago Oriental Institute. Suspicions were first voiced in 1984 by Ingegerd Lindblad, and elaborated on by Henry Fischer in 1987. In 1932 the Louvre acquired the famous Amarna ‘wood head of a harp’. It was withdrawn from display in the 1980s and finally condemned officially in 1991 as a result of a test indicating that the tropical wood used was not used in ancient Egypt and that it was not more than about 400 years old. The Louvre’s ‘blue head’, acquired in 1923, was determined in 2001 to be a modern piece, probably made between 1920 and 1923 and influenced by Art Deco.
In 1930 Ludwig Borchardt published a major article on 56 Egyptian forgeries that had entered European public and private collections in less than ten years, including 11 pieces in the prestigious collection of the Brussels collector Adolphe Stoclet. These were selected from some 250 top-quality forgeries uncovered by him during that time. Borchardt was threatened with a lawsuit from Stoclet, but he held his ground. Fiechter’s fascinating chapter on Borchardt, based upon his extensive research into his archives, is essential reading. It was in these archives that Fiechter came across the name of the man directly or indirectly responsible for creating many of the best forgeries of the first three decades of the 20th century, Oxan Aslanian (1887-1968). Through research in the Met’s archives Fiechter also discovered that in the 1920s Herbert Winlock had already realised that Aslanian was the source of many forgeries. Neither had published his name for fear of a lawsuit. After 1930 most experts referred to him simply as ‘The Master of Berlin’. Two chapters illustrate a number of his productions as well as some of the originals from which he drew his inspiration.
A chapter is devoted to Paolo Dingli, Mario Riccinio and their colleagues who, in addition to their work as restorers in the Egyptian Museum, were also gifted forgers. They and others in Egypt produced thousands of forgeries during the first third of the 20th century, most of which were sold to unsuspecting tourists, dealers and collectors in Europe and America from about 1920 to 1940. Another chapter deals with the ‘Mansour Collection’, a large group of Amarna-style sculptures and reliefs, over 100 in all, that are in all probability still being offered for sale. The affair of the granodiorite statue of the Middle Kingdom pharaoh Sesotris III, acquired by François Pinault in Paris in 1998, and of the alabaster torso of an Amarna princess created by Shaun Greenhalgh and purchased in 2003 by the Bolton Museum (see this issue of Minerva, pp. 8-9) are, of course, included in this very up-to-date work.
Some of the modern techniques for detecting forgeries are discussed, as is the work of some of those Egyptologists who were expert at detecting forgeries, such as John D. Cooney, Henry Fischer, and Dietrich Wildung. ‘The Aesthetics of the Forger’ (Minerva, May/June 1991, pp. 10-15) is also treated in some detail.
Unfortunately, the quality of the illustrations is very poor and indeed several are accidentally omitted even though there are references to them in the text (such as Figs 2, 3 – the wrong illustration – and 74). The translation is excellent and the bibliography and index are of great assistance to those who wish to do further research into this fascinating topic. The book is a lively read and a must for those interested in Egyptian antiquities. The author previously published a scholarly work on forgeries in Faux et faussaires en art égyptien, in 2005, that is highly recommended to scholars. |
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