File:Anglo-Saxon glass mount (FindID 498443-377715).jpg

English: A conical bi-chrome glass stud slightly taller than it is wide, width 16.5-17.5 mm, height 18mm, on a clay core. The glass is opaque grey to off-white and deep blue, semi-opaque and worked in a feathered pattern and wrapped around a fired clay core, visible at the base.

The base diameter would fit a substantial setting and it would have projected for some distance. The top appears quite smooth and unchipped and the whole weighs 6.34g. There is also a possibility that this was a playing piece from a set, as mentioned for a glass cabochon found at Wearmouth (Cramp 2005, 91). Playing Anglo-Saxon pieces of shaped animal tooth are of similar dimensions, while glass counters were used in the Roman period and taller glass playing men in the Viking period, but this Lincolnshire find is much more likely to be a decorative setting from fine metalwork.

The rather muddy glass colours also suggest that the glasses used had already been recycled, and the clay core indicates careful use of a precious resource as well as a means of moulding on a decorated sheet of glass. The best parallels for this new find, though none matches the form, are the oval cabochon pieces of dark blue and opaque white glass from the Anglo-Saxon monastery at Monk Wearmouth, County Durham. These have clearer glass and are oval in shape, but share the technique of enrobing a clay core with glass. These have a terracotta core, waste glass cover and coloured top layer with marvered trails on top (Cramp 2006, 261).

Plain, circular blue glass domed studs in silver collars were used on the now lost, Witham hanging-bowl and inside the Ormside bowl, both silver vessels. Another loose simple blue oval cabochon fitting was found at Whitby Abbey (Webster & Backhouse 1991, nos 134, 107 l.i) ). Large blue and white, flat studs highlight the gilt bronze decoration on the Rupertus Cross, with patterns borrowed from the celtic repertoire (ibid. no 133). A circular, convex blue and white glass stud, still in a gilt bronze collar, carries a triskele of white birds against a deep blue ground (found at Freckenham, Suffolk; now British Museum, PE 2002,0502.1). This stud links the monastic arts of glass and metalworking with Insular book decoration.

There was clearly a fashion for such glass pieces in Anglo-Saxon workshops in the second half of the 8th century. Prominent coloured glass inlays area part of the Insular tradition with its roots in Ireland, where a precocious use of coloured glass reached a peak in fine metalwork of the 8th century, with both clear and opaque glass, some of it inlaid hot as enamel: domed glass studs with geometric patterns punctuate the ornament on the Ardagh chalice and Derrynaflan paten. In this Irish work the emphasis is on contrasting coloured zones and inlays, technically more complex and in a diverging tradition from this new find, though imitated elsewhere in English work. Opaque white glass on dark blue is seen on contemporary Irish bangles and elaborate beads, and more importantly in locally made millefiori glass rods (Carroll 2001). Such rods have been found in a workshop area of Wearmouth's twin foundation at Jarrow on Tyneside (Cramp 2006, Ch. 31.4).

All this confirms that this Lincolnshire find is Anglo-Saxon work of mid-Saxon date (second half of the 8^th to 9th century), in the Insular artistic tradition, and was once part of a complex and fine piece of decorative metalwork. Three, possibly four of the parallels cited are associated with Christian metalwork or monastic establishments.

S M Youngs 15/04/12

References J. Carroll 2001 'Glass bangles as a regional development in Early Medieval Ireland' in M. Redknap, N. Edwards et al. (eds), Pattern and Purpose in Insular Art, 2001, 101- 14. Oxford: Oxbow.

R. Cramp 2005 Wearmouth and Jarrow Monastic Sites, Vol 1. Swindon: English Heritage 2006 'Bangles, beads and glass objects', Wearmouth and Jarrow Monastic Sites, Vol. 2, 258-67. Swindon: English Heritage L.

Webster, J. Backhouse 1991 The Making of England London: British Museum