Glass Paste Research Articles

IX.—On some points in the History of Inlaid Jewellery

The Early Teutonic jewellery ornamented with garnets and glass pastes, frequently known as Orfévrerie Cloisonnée, has been so extensively discussed that it may appear almost superfluous to draw attention to it once more. But the publication in the following pages of objects now in the British Museum will, it is hoped, supply fresh links in the chain of evidence connecting it with the East; for it is now universally agreed that this kind of jewellery entered Europe from Asia, and it is with examples of early date from that continent that we are here chiefly concerned. The principal aim of this Paper is to make better known the armlet from the Oxus, and the reliquary from Afghanistan reproduced by figures 1 and 2 of the accompanying coloured plate (Plate XVI.). But in considering these objects it has been difficult to avoid speculation as to the origin of the style of ornamentation which they represent. The early date and pronounced Perse-politan style of the armlet bring us nearer to Egypt than anything hitherto discovered in the East, and in view of these facts, we are tempted to revive the question whether the Cloisonnée jewellery of Central Asia can have been introduced from the banks of the Nile. The opposite theory, which regards this jewellery as indigenous in Asia, has probably the balance of opinion in its favour; but in the present state of our knowledge, its acceptance would appear to involve something of a dilemma. For on this view the great antiquity of the earliest Egyptian jewels in this style would compel us either to prove that their Eastern prototypes were in existence some three thousand years before Christ; or to suppose two independent centres of invention, one in Asia, the other in Africa, thus severing Egypt from all connection with the development of the art on the neighbouring continent. Time may remove the difficulties incident to these alternatives, but at present neither of them is easy of acceptance. The perfection of the famous inlaid jewels of Dashur (figs. 1 and la), which belong to the twelfth dynasty (third millennium, B.C.), would make it necessary to assume from their rude Asiatic forerunners an almost fabulous antiquity. But so far as I am aware, neither Babylonia nor Assyria, Central Asia, or India, have as yet produced anything in this style of so remote a date; and though the early archæology of China is at present so little known that it may have many surprises in store, as matters now stand it is a legitimate inference that the Far East could hardly have exercised an artistic influence towards the West thirty centuries before the beginning of our era. The theory which derives enamelling from Asia, does not involve the same dilemma, because this was not one of the characteristic arts of Ancient Egypt.