1 - Introduction: the Background to the Study of the Anglo-Saxon Goldsmith

Summary

SYNOPSIS: THE PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

IT is possible to feel, after reading the chapter on ‘Artists and Craftsmen in Anglo-Saxon England’ in Dodwell’s magisterial study of Anglo-Saxon art from visual and documentary sources, that we already know rather a lot about the Anglo-Saxon goldsmith. He even began his chapter by pointing out that it is the ‘interest of the Anglo-Saxons in resplendence [that] means that much of our information about their artists is weighted in favour of those who worked in gold’. His conclusions to the same chapter are worth quoting in full, for although they purport to be about Anglo-Saxon craftsmen in general, they are in fact largely about goldsmiths, and they are also revealing of both the surprising strengths of the documentary record in respect of this one group, and its limitations, to which Dodwell himself drew attention:

Little indeed is known of any Anglo-Saxon artist as an individual, and none emerges as a fully rounded artistic personality despite the most thorough combing of our sources … We are lucky if we can catch a fleeting glimpse of the work of a Mannig or a Spearhafoc [both goldsmiths] in the monastic sphere, which is more than we can discern in the more important secular area. Any conclusions about them must, then, be couched in the most cautious of terms. We can claim a certain versatility which might allow an illuminator to be a calligrapher, and a goldsmith to be a painter. We can see that some artists travelled to different parts of the country, and even abroad, on various commissions. We can deduce that import- ant monastic art treasures were made by secular goldsmiths, and we can suggest that these latter often worked in teams. We get a hint of a fact that craftsmen’s workshops were already being assembled in streets. We can get small insights into the importance to secular craftsmen of their attachment to wealthy households. We can show that some categories of craftsmen were admired abroad, that most received a proper degree of respect at home, and that their prestige was graduated in terms of the costliness of the material used. This probably meant that the finest artists gravitated towards the crafts in precious metals where the social esteem was higher and the rewards greater.