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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 November 2011
Beading was frequently used as a decorative and strengthening finish for the rims of silver bowls and dishes in the late Roman and early Byzantine periods. There are two main types of beading:
(i) the bead-and-reel band (PL. XXA).
(ii) the single-bead band (PL. XXB).
The first consists of a series of oval or sausage-shaped solid beads alternating with smaller double-ridged reels (PL. XXC), while the second is a row of beads, often hollow, nominally of the same size, placed closely together (PL. XXE). In addition, some hybrid beaded rims, intermediate between the two, are found (for example, the two flanged bowls from the Carthage Treasure have a single row of small hemispherical beads worked almost entirely from the front). Beading is usually positioned on or close to the rims or outer edges of the dishes or vessels. Beaded decoration was particularly popular during the late Roman period, and decorates vessels found in many different locations, both within the Empire and outside it, for example fragments of beading found in a hoard of hacksilber from Coleraine, in Northern Ireland (PL. XXD), and a flanged silver bowl from the River Don in southern Russia, as well as vessels from Mildenhall, in England, Chaourse, in France, Carthage, Syria and Constantinople. The use of bead-and-reel decoration seems to be the earlier of the two techniques and was used on many of the vessels in the Chaourse Treasure in the third century A.D., while material from later hoards of the fourth to the sixth centuries, such as the Mildenhall treasure, show that the large single-beaded band had then become extremely popular. To discover the techniques employed to produce this simple beaded decoration examples of both types were examined using optical and scanning electron microscopy and X-ray fluorescence spectrometry. Models were made in copper to test the resulting theories on how the different methods of beading were carried out.
1 Chased silver bowl, c. A.D. 400. The Carthage Treasure. Dalton, O. M., Catalogue of Early Christian Antiquities, nos. 356, 357. (Department of Medieval and Later Antiquities, British Museum, London.)Google Scholar
2 D. E. Strong, Greek and Roman Gold and Silver Plate (1966), 171.
3 Painter, K. S., The Mildenhall Treasure (British Museum Publications, 1977);Google ScholarKent, J. P. C. and Painter, K. S., The Wealth of the Roman World, A.D. 300–700 (British Museum Publications, 1977);Google ScholarDodd, Erica Cruikshank, Byzantine Silver Stamps, Dumbarton Oaks Studies, 7 (Washington, DC, 1961).Google Scholar
4 Walters, H. B., Catalogue of the Silver Plate (Greek, Etruscan and Roman) in the British Museum (British Museum, 1921).Google Scholar
5 Large flat dish with niello swastika from Chatuzange. Walters, op. cit. (note 4), no. 131. No. 93 5–1 I, Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum, London.
6 Small bowl from Chaourse, Aisne, France. Walters, op. cit. (note 4), no. 164. No. 1889 10–19 8, Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum, London.
7 Large flat dish with niello swastika from Chaourse, Aisne, France. Walters, op. cit. (note 4), no. 154. No. 1889 10–19 18, Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum, London.
8 See PL. XXF, where the beads around this small bowl (no. 167) from Chaourse have been outlined with an engraving tool, which has slipped and cut into the next bead and the intervening reel.
9 The small bowls from Chaourse are nos. 154 and 167 (Walters, op. cit. (note 4)) and they are illustrated in PLS. XXIB and XXF.
10 Curle, Alexander O., The Treasure of Traprain (Glasgow, 1923), 23.Google Scholar
11 Ibid. pl. xxiii (opp. p. 48) shows fragments of two bowls, nos. 38, 43.
12 Maryon, H., Man xlviii (1948), p. 41.Google Scholar
13 K. S. Painter, Mildenhall Cat., no. 2, no. 3; The Mildenhall Treasure, The Bacchic platters (British Museum Publications, 1977), 26.Google Scholar
14 The Mileham dish, a large square dish with a circular central depression, and beaded rim. Walters, op. cit. (note 4), no. 87.
