- Chapter Thirty-Seven -
Anglo-Scandinavian style ring-chain and key-patterns of the tenth century can be
found on many sites around the Irish Sea. The regional or 'workshop' production
must be seen as a differing response to varied accumulations of influences.
When suitable, locally available stone was selected by the stone carvers; otherwise
it was imported from the nearest source (some composite crosses have been manu-
factured from more than one type of stone).25 The sculptors of the later slabs would
have used a similar array of tools and techniques (such as pocking and smoothing)
to the earlier, individual craftsmen, though the removal of considerable amounts of
stone to create deeper relief designs required greater input of time, and labour, and
the more complex designs suggest access to pattern books or motif pieces, as well as
specialized tools such as compasses and dividers. An unfinished cross at Kells
gives some indications that patterns were probably first sketched out on the stone
and then blocked out in rough relief. Once the background had been deepened and
interlace executed,26 the head of the cross and figures would be completed. One cross
at Sancreed near St Buryan, Cornwall, has interlace of tenth-century type, and is
inscribed with the name RUNHOL, believed to be the name of the sculptor. A
cross at Andreas, Isle of Man, is inscribed: 'Gaut Bjornson of Kuli made it'.27 The
tenth-century cross by Gaut at Kirk Michael is inscribed 'Maibrikti, son of Athakan
the smith, raised this Cross' - a man with a Celtic name (as was his father's)
commissioning a Norse sculptor to carve a Christian memorial.
Once the carving was finished, it is likely that the final work was undertaken by the
painter. Though all traces of such paint have generally now been weathered away, it is
likely that many later stones were richly painted in different colours, sometimes on a
surface smoothed with lime-based whitewash. A number of apparently uninscribed
stones may have borne painted texts. Some stone crosses copied to differing degrees
compositions in metal and wood, and it has been suggested that the Ahenny North
cross (Co. Tipperary) may have been painted to give the impression of a great golden
cross, studded with enamel and glass studs (copying closely the metal cross form
(Figure 37. 12 ) ).28
It is impossible to estimate the number of wooden crosses, pillars, slabs and free-
standing crosses which once existed. Adomnan in his Life of St Columba c.688-92
describes a cross which has been set up in a millstone, and was still extant in his own
day. Some depictions of cross-slabs appear to show simple wooden crosses (either
those made from two laths of wood at right angles to each other,29 or with pointed or
spiked bases.3o The construction of some composite crosses and in particular of two
of the Iona crosses (Figure 37.9) in segments using mortice and tenon joints may rep-
resent the application of carpentry techniques to a special problem (1. Fisher, in litt.)
rather than conscious copying of either freestanding wooden crosses, or smaller
wooden crosses covered in metal plates (for example, the eighth-century Anglo-Saxon
'Rupertus Cross'). Some of the rounded shaft crosses (such as the Pillar of Eliseg,
Powys and Gosforth Cross, Cumberland) give the impression of being based on
wooden prototypes, as modified tree trunks, while the interlace-decorated wooden
boss found at Wood Quay, Dublin, may have been originally attached to a wooden
cross (Lang 1988: 4). This also occurs in related stonework, such as the decorated stone
pillar shafts from Llantwit Major, Glamorgan, which resemble in form architectural
columns with vertical V-shaped grooves to hold planks or panels, possibly as part of