METALWORKbecame abundant as a result of Scandinavian imports
of coinage from the Islamic world, and metal objects
made of very pure silver were manufactured in large
quantity. Gold, once apparently abundant in Ireland,
seems to have been very scarce, and it too was likely
to have been recycled or imported—a text on kingship
speaks of knowing gold by its foreign ornaments. At
the height of the production of luxury metalwork in
the eighth and ninth centuries, gold was always used
sparingly as filigree, granulation, or gilding, and only
one surviving complete object of substance, the ninth-
century Loughan Brooch, is fabricated of gold (see
Jewelery and Personal Ornaments).
Techniques of metalworking seem to have been
somewhat conservative. Objects—examples include
the Ardagh and Derrynaflan chalices and the Der-
rynaflan Paten—are often elaborate constructions
where continental analogs are often structurally rela-
tively simple. Casting of metal, especially for the mak-
ing of brooches, pins, and other smaller objects, was
remarkably competent with much ornament, to all
appearances engraved or chased, but actually produced
in the mold. Casting in bivalve clay molds formed on
lead, wax, or wooden models was the preferred
method, although there is evidence of the use of lost
wax casting for complex pieces such as the compo-
nents of the stem of the Ardagh Chalice. Casting was,
however, limited in scale, and it was not until the
production of fine hand bells, made entirely of bronze,
that pieces of any great size were produced in the ninth
or tenth centuries. The older bells—not unlike a cow-
bell in shape—were made of sheet iron folded to shape
and dipped in bronze. These are the ones that were
often enshrined—St. Patrick’s Bell, provided with a
reliquary at the end of the eleventh or beginning of the
twelfth century is a good example.
Inventiveness within the conservative tradition was
often remarkable—the extraordinary ornament of fine
dark trumpet spirals on the reverse of the Tara Brooch,
long thought to have been made of niello (a black
sulphide of silver), is in fact a pattern raised on copper
plates by stamping and then covering the area with a
wash of silver solder and polishing it down until the
copper shows through in a remarkably delicate fashion.
At the beginning of the period, craftsmen turned out
brooches and pins for cloak fastening which were very
like those being produced in Late Roman Britain (see
Jewelery and Personal Ornaments). These were pre-
dominantly of bronze. The brooches were sometimes
enriched with enamel, and the decorative repertoire
was limited to stylized palmettes and later to spiral
scrollwork. By the seventh century, more sophisticated
products with a wider range of decorative techniques
were appearing. Filigree, gilding, granulation, the
occasional use of amber, were all adopted by work-
shops by about the year 700 A.D. A characteristic of
the finest metalwork is the appearance of cast poly-
chrome glass studs with angular inset metal grilles
designed to mimic gem-set garnets so beloved of
Germanic jewelers.
By this time also, many of the greater monasteries
had become wealthy and powerful, and they not only
were able to commission craftsmen but also to have
craft workshops themselves. By the end of the seventh
century, elaborate decorated house-shaped shrines to
protect the relics of native saints were being produced
(see Early Christian Art). In the eighth century, the
production for the church clearly accelerated, and the
numbers of reliquaries must have been significant to
judge by the surviving corpus of complete examples
and fragments of house-shaped shrines. Specialized
reliquaries such as book shrines had made their appear-
ance by the eighth century—the oldest known is the
Lough Kinale shrine, the earliest in a series which
continues into the high Middle Ages. The enshrine-
ment of bells associated with native saints seems to
have begun at an early date—what may be the crest
of such a shrine was preserved at Killua Castle, County
Westmeath until acquired by the National Museum in
the early twentieth century. The obverse of the shrine
crest shows in openwork an orantfigure between two
beasts—almost certainly a representation of Christ.
This remarkable composition may be traced to early-
medieval Merovingian and Burgundian belt-buckles.
The same motif occurs twice on a recently recon-
structed large altar or processional cross from Tully,
County Roscommon.
The Tully Cross, made of wood covered with sheets
of bronze and cast bronze decorative bosses and plates,
introduces us to the manner in which almost inter-
changeable parts were created—square and round
bronze bosses, binding strips, hinged tabs, animal-
headed terminals—which could appear on objects of
different type. It is often implied that the work of the
period was so intricate that long periods of time were
required to create some of the surviving objects, but it
is clear that workshops were practical places where
the techniques employed, such as casting and die-
stamping, were designed for the efficient production
of multiples, and by no means was every object a
masterpiece.
Some pieces were exceptional, and the finest are
the altar vessels from the hoards of Ardagh, County
Limerick and Derrynaflan, County Tipperary. The
Ardagh Hoard consisted of two chalices and four
brooches. Probably deposited during the tenth century,
the brooches, which may all have been made for eccle-
siastical use, represent the major phases of personal
ornament development from the eighth and ninth cen-
turies (see Jewelry and Personal Ornaments). One of