Vera Evison is a key figure and expert in the study of Anglo-Saxon glass vessels, having published numerous papers on their typology and chronology over her distinguished career. In 2000, Evison produced an update and revision of D B Harden’s original vessel classifications from 1956 and 1978, and her 1982 classic work on the curious claw beakers remains of significant interest. The slim volume reviewed here comprises an illustrated catalogue of the 229 glass items in the British Museum collection, plus two detailed discussions: one on form, chronology and manufacture by Evison herself, and another on the glass composition by Ian Freestone, an established specialist in the archaeological sciences. The collection of glass in question consists mostly of vessels (such as bowls, cone and claw beakers), but also of glass pendants, folded fragments of vessel rims reused as beads, and jewellery with small glass insets. Most of the vessels are complete or partially complete (and restored) by virtue of their recovery from furnished burials. None of the highly numerous Anglo-Saxon glass beads is included, apart from those large disc-shaped beads that can be identified as spindle whorls or sword beads.
The British Museum collection has a generally good provenance, with examples from some of the important Anglo-Saxon sites that the British Museum houses: Mucking (Essex), Great Chesterford (Cambridgeshire), Dover Buckland I and II and Faversham (all Kent), amongst others. It also includes some of the earliest fragments of Anglo-Saxon glass to be identified, and some fragments from the excavations in the 1920s of the monastery at Whitby (North Yorkshire). The glass is treated in four chronological spans based on differences in form and colour: Period I c ad 400–550, Period II c ad 550–700, Period III c ad 700–900 and Period IV c ad 900–1100. There are no examples from Period IV in the British Museum collection.
The major themes in any discussion of Anglo-Saxon glass centre on the continuity (or discontinuity) with Roman traditions, the influences of foreign fashion, the development of insular industries, the origins of the glass stuff itself, the whereabouts of factories and workshops, the precise techniques of manufacture and the development of these throughout the period. The contribution of the British Museum collection to such issues is addressed. Perhaps the key observation is the close similarity of glass vessel types found in Anglo-Saxon England to those found in the Rhineland, northern France and Belgium. The Kempston-type cone beaker is one example: its production in England, as well as on the continent, is suggested by the comparatively large number here, including some very early examples. There are seven reasonably complete examples of the Kempston-type in the collection, including the elegant type specimen itself. All together, the complex picture of insular forms, imports and influences from the continent and Scandinavia is paralleled in studies of the ‘other’ kind of glass object, that of beads (see, for example, Brugmann Reference Brugmann2004). The wider social contexts of all this complexity is not, however, within the discussion.
Turning to the scientific investigations, earlier Anglo-Saxon glass is of the soda-lime-silica type, with a switch from the use of Egyptian natron to potash as the source of soda in the late eighth to ninth centuries. These facts reflect far wider trends of glass technology and production in Late Antiquity in both north-west Europe and the Near East. The evidence shows that glassmaking was done in relatively few factories in the eastern Mediterranean, the raw glass then widely traded and distributed to workshops in Europe (including Britain) to make the final products (vessels, beads, etc). Freestone’s analysis of the Anglo-Saxon glass in the British Museum is given a vital context through comparison with continental glasses and the major glass-producing industries of the eastern Mediterranean. The close similarity of Period I glass, for example, to Merovingian glass is consistent with the idea that both were made from the coastal sands of the Levant: although the glass supply was reduced in the post-Roman period, its region of origin did not change.
The book is an excellent resource for the Anglo-Saxon glass scholar, with rich notes on type and decoration by piece and period, alongside an analytical discussion of the molecular composition of the glass. It is up to the reader to cogitate on the detailed results of the two different approaches (typology/chronology and molecular) and to construct an integrated understanding. What results is a nuanced and pleasantly surprising narrative which inspires the desire for further research. The only disappointment is the rather basic nature of the distribution maps, but, as you might expect from a British Museum publication, the colour photography of the choicest vessels shows them beautifully lit as pieces of art; this is the draw for the more casual reader.
