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Lot Essay
PUBLISHED:
V. Evison, 'Anglo-Saxon Glass Claw Beakers', Archaeologia, 107, 1982, p. 60.
V. Evison, 'Glass Vessels in England, AD 400-1100', in J. Price (ed.), Glass in Britain and Ireland AD 30-1100, British Museum Occasional Paper 127, London, 2000, pp. 65, 74, group 35.4.
W. Stephens, Early Medieval Glass Vessels Found in Kent, BAR British Series 424, Oxford, 2006, pp. 56-57, no. 3.
Claw-beakers are rare and remarkable survivals from the Anglo-Saxon period in England, and Merovingian and Frankish periods on the continent. During the late 5th to 7th Century A.D. glass was a luxury although the quality, quantity and variety of the vessels produced were much less than at the end of the Roman Empire. Claw-beakers are the dramatic exceptions, where the hollow claws would have filled with liquid as the drink was poured in. They probably developed from high-class late Roman vessels like the famous Mucking claw-beaker in the British Museum dated to the late 4th or early 5th century A.D., which was already over 100 years old when it was included in a burial in the Saxon Cemetery 2 at Mucking in Essex (D.B. Harden et al., Glass of the Caesars, Milan, 1987, pp. 257-8, no. 146).
Claw-beakers were made with the hollow 'claws' being applied to the body individually as hot blobs of glass, blown and immediately hooked downwards with the bottom tip reattached lower down the body before the next claw was formed. After all the claws had been applied, the vessel would have been attached to a pontil so that the rim could be fashioned.
Anglo-Saxon claw-beakers were the subject of an in-depth analysis by Vera Evison ('Anglo-Saxon Glass Claw-Beakers', Archaeologia CVII, 1982, pp. 43-76) following on from the first major study of Anglo-Saxon and early medieval glass by Donald Harden ('Glass Vessels in Britain and Ireland, A.D. 400-1000', in D.B. Harden (ed.), Dark Age Britain, Studies Presented to E.T. Leeds, London, 1956, pp. 132-67). This latter publication was expanded upon more recently in J. Price (ed.), Glass in Britain and Ireland AD 350-1100, British Museum Occasional Paper no. 127, London, 2000, which includes a further article by Evison on 'Glass Vessels in England AD 400-1100'.
In her 1982 study Evison listed 55 Anglo-Saxon claw-beakers, which she divided into five main groups. This claw beaker belongs to her 'Claw-Beaker Type 3b', a shorter version of and contemporary with her Type 3a claw-beaker, but also with a more conical body. Based on the distribution of finds it is believed that they were most probably made in south eastern England in the later 6th or 7th century, rather than on the continent (Evison 2000, pp. 65, 75). Although this claw-beaker was not included in the 1982 numbered list (it had been compiled in the 1970s), it was mentioned as a recent find.
V. Evison, 'Anglo-Saxon Glass Claw Beakers', Archaeologia, 107, 1982, p. 60.
V. Evison, 'Glass Vessels in England, AD 400-1100', in J. Price (ed.), Glass in Britain and Ireland AD 30-1100, British Museum Occasional Paper 127, London, 2000, pp. 65, 74, group 35.4.
W. Stephens, Early Medieval Glass Vessels Found in Kent, BAR British Series 424, Oxford, 2006, pp. 56-57, no. 3.
Claw-beakers are rare and remarkable survivals from the Anglo-Saxon period in England, and Merovingian and Frankish periods on the continent. During the late 5th to 7th Century A.D. glass was a luxury although the quality, quantity and variety of the vessels produced were much less than at the end of the Roman Empire. Claw-beakers are the dramatic exceptions, where the hollow claws would have filled with liquid as the drink was poured in. They probably developed from high-class late Roman vessels like the famous Mucking claw-beaker in the British Museum dated to the late 4th or early 5th century A.D., which was already over 100 years old when it was included in a burial in the Saxon Cemetery 2 at Mucking in Essex (D.B. Harden et al., Glass of the Caesars, Milan, 1987, pp. 257-8, no. 146).
Claw-beakers were made with the hollow 'claws' being applied to the body individually as hot blobs of glass, blown and immediately hooked downwards with the bottom tip reattached lower down the body before the next claw was formed. After all the claws had been applied, the vessel would have been attached to a pontil so that the rim could be fashioned.
Anglo-Saxon claw-beakers were the subject of an in-depth analysis by Vera Evison ('Anglo-Saxon Glass Claw-Beakers', Archaeologia CVII, 1982, pp. 43-76) following on from the first major study of Anglo-Saxon and early medieval glass by Donald Harden ('Glass Vessels in Britain and Ireland, A.D. 400-1000', in D.B. Harden (ed.), Dark Age Britain, Studies Presented to E.T. Leeds, London, 1956, pp. 132-67). This latter publication was expanded upon more recently in J. Price (ed.), Glass in Britain and Ireland AD 350-1100, British Museum Occasional Paper no. 127, London, 2000, which includes a further article by Evison on 'Glass Vessels in England AD 400-1100'.
In her 1982 study Evison listed 55 Anglo-Saxon claw-beakers, which she divided into five main groups. This claw beaker belongs to her 'Claw-Beaker Type 3b', a shorter version of and contemporary with her Type 3a claw-beaker, but also with a more conical body. Based on the distribution of finds it is believed that they were most probably made in south eastern England in the later 6th or 7th century, rather than on the continent (Evison 2000, pp. 65, 75). Although this claw-beaker was not included in the 1982 numbered list (it had been compiled in the 1970s), it was mentioned as a recent find.