Early Islamic zoomorphic glass containers reveal a great deal about the complex nature of craft trade in the Eastern Mediterranean during the late Antique period. These containers are generally regarded as a derivative ‘knock-off’ of late Roman diatreta, but this chapter instead argues that these containers are a distinct object type with its own history and rich cultural meanings traceable to at least the first century CE. The animal-shaped containers were likely designed by glassblowers who were experienced with not only designing and producing these objects but also their trade – that is, merchant-glassblowers who were part of wider communities of practice. The manner in which these containers were realized offers information about the interconnected design, production and the retail roles played by their anonymous makers. The animal bodies are thus another way that the anonymous craftworkers lost to history can be known, if not named, and their world better understood.

Craftwork in the late Antique period is distinct and its overlooked artisans deserving of study. This chapter begins with an overview of the general problem of anonymity in art history, focusing on late Antique craftworkers (fourth to eighth centuries CE) and the environments in which they worked. As is the guiding insight of this book, unnamed does not mean unknowable – much is revealed when the many fragments of evidence are analysed and placed into perspective. From artefacts such as the shipbuilding scene on a fourth-century CE gold-glass roundel, in aggregate it is possible to start to see a picture emerge with increasing clarity, including hierarchic interactions among skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled assistants. Anonymity in the art of craft production was and is not a singular phenomenon. In the late Roman world, the economic and social dynamics of craft production were complex, containing basic patterns and elements that continue to this day.

This book’s subject of unnamed artists is particularly significant because it remains a controversial topic. In certain cases, creative partners with skill and artistic vision who are essential collaborators in a workshop community have clearly been taken advantage of, whether intentionally or unintentionally, often reflecting their membership in marginalized groups. It is a widespread practice that has been inadequately analysed by scholars. This chapter concludes the book by summarizing the main themes concerning anonymous late Roman craftworkers while also discussing parallels with present-day issues in collaborative professional art, including the use of uncredited assistants and the ethical issues surrounding that. A foundation is thereby established for applying the approaches and insights of this project to a ‘post-craft’ methodology that goes beyond ancient art history, one that will enable a better – and fairer – understanding of process and product and the unsung makers who have been such important contributors to both.

The most direct and intimate evidence of anonymous workers in the late Roman period is the remaining work itself, notably unfinished carving and the surviving traces of the workers’ method of production on the objects themselves. Late Roman process art – that is, visual representations of production processes – is revealing not only about making but also about the maker. For example, these objects could: (1) be seemingly finished but actually incomplete (whether temporarily paused or abandoned); or (2) might appear incomplete in their finished form, such as marble sculpture with structural supports and blank portraiture. Adopting a methodology that privileges evidence of in-process or ephemeral making, this chapter examines ‘the unfinished’ as an intentional aesthetic choice in late Roman visual culture, investigating what this might tell us about the makers themselves. This aspect of craftworkers and their production processes has not yet been studied in depth.

This chapter examines the methodological and ideological limitations in past scholarship on the history of craftwork, which includes a reconsideration of the core terms, debates and historiography regarding late Roman production. Of particular interest are the misleading binaries – in most cases not actually a conceptual feature of the original era – that arose concerning the producers themselves, their work and production processes, places of production and more. Among these are the division between the named ‘artist’ on one hand and the anonymous, supposedly unskilled ‘maker’ on the other, as well as art and craft itself, enslaved worker and free and worksite and shop. Beyond recognizing such dualities as inadequate, a framework is established for a new paradigm with which to approach late Antique craftworkers – one applicable in particular to marginalized unknown makers of the Roman past but also useful for both art historians and historians more broadly.

Even when anonymously produced, inscriptions can allow access to the engravers and their intent. This chapter argues that fourth-century glass objects such as the Wint Hill-style bowls – engraved glassware produced in multiples as part of a related group – were inscribed anonymously in order to achieve varied ends. One was to help choreograph multisensory engagement by their users, such as by adopting the voice of the object in the first person. Creators transferred any recognition as makers for the sake of the broader purpose, concealing/obscuring their voice but not silencing it. Unnamed makers via the objects’ ‘voice’ engaged their users as partners long after these bowls left the workshop. The bowls further allow us to reconstruct aspects of the division of labour from what is likely a single workshop. Although the makers remain unnamed, the finished objects enable us to discern individual and collective choices made in the craft process.

Roman working spaces defy classification due to their variation. In craft, we see this in the form of a ‘work/shop’, a building designed for the consumer to visit that may have served as either a late Roman worksite, commercial space or both a working area and shop. Through a comparative methodology that integrates archaeological, epigraphic and textual sources, the likely varied and dynamic forms that a ‘work/shop’ may have taken in antiquity are considered in this chapter. Late Roman architecture and its decoration, for instance, including market stalls, mosaics and different types of ‘advertising’, provide access to information about public interactions between workers and the consumer, leading to a kind of shared portrait of otherwise unknown craft professionals. This chapter analyses the interactions between workers involved in skilled craft making, shopkeepers and the potential customer as core parts of everyday economic and cultural interaction in this world.

At each stage in the career of a craftworker, reciprocal making between and among skilled artisans in communities of practice was critical in the late Roman world of craft production. This chapter considers what we know about the teaching, learning and inter-industry collaboration that occurred in the ‘communities of practice’ (especially apprenticeships) and professional networks of skilled Roman craftworkers. This is investigated in particular through textual sources such as contracts, guild membership and law codes as well as archaeological evidence of interrupted sequences of production (chaîne opératoire), demonstration and training pieces. Special attention is given to archaeological traces of coordinated craft production. Taken together, it is a nuanced exploration of the varied ways that communities of practising late Roman craftworkers, particularly glass producers, were themselves made and sustained.