Tuesday Times Tables: Art and Design in Roman Britain

Choosing the theme of ‘Art and Design in Roman Britain’ was easy for my handling table, due to the wealth of art within the collections in the Roman Baths. I focused on pottery, glass, wall painting, mosaics and jewellery as they were perfect examples of art in Britain, and within Bath as all my objects were local finds. Having only ever studied Roman art within Rome and the surrounding empire, it was a challenge learning new things about art within Roman Britain, especially the cultural overlapping with the Celtic tribes within Britain at the time of the Roman conquest.

Overlap between the Celtic and Roman styles was mainly seen within the jewellery on my handling table. The brooches and bracelets were perfect examples of a Celtic influence, due to the swirling designs which are identifiable as Celtic. I had beautiful twisted bronze and copper bracelets, with a tiny child’s bracelet which was a personal favourite. I also had a number of replica brooches, pins and torcs on display as examples of how varied and colourful Roman jewellery was and how the styles had changed.

Child's Copper Alloy Bracelet

Mosaics are always important examples of art within the Roman world, let alone in Roman Britain where fewer have survived. I used tesserae (the square stones in a mosaic) as an example of the scale on which each tiny tessera was placed, and was amazed how durable they are considering their age. Accompanying my tesserae was a piece of mosaic from Weymouth House School in Bath, found in 1897.  The mosaic was popular with those who had never seen or had contact with a Roman mosaic before.

Mosaic piece from Weymouth House School

Using Samian pottery as examples was perfect due to its vibrant ochre colouring and beautiful designs of birds, and a sun among other motifs on the sherds of the pottery, I also had a replica Samian bowl with a Barbotine design around the top to show how Samian ware might have looked when complete.

Samian Bowl Sherd

The most popular and impressive item was a small bronze eagle, which was an ornamental fitting for an object. I was amazed how well preserved the eagle was with the perfect incision of feathers on the wings outstretched, and on the face of the beak. Although small it made a big impact on my handling table due its beauty, and for its symbolism of the Ancient Roman world and its presence which is still here today.

Roman Bronze Eagle Figurine

Megan 

Roman Society Intern

The Hippo Camp!

The Beau Street Hoard features coins with all sorts of pictures on the back, including gods and goddesses, emperors and temples, and many different kinds of animals, both real and mythical. One of these mythical animals is the Hippocamp.

The Hippocamp is half-horse and half-fish, almost like an equine mermaid! The Roman god of the sea, Neptune, is often shown using Hippocampi to pull his chariot. We have a mosaic of a Hippocamp in the museum.

 

The Hippocamp Mosaic

 “Hippocamp” is actually a Greek word. “Hippo” means horse and “Kampos” means sea monster. We often translate it as “sea-horse”.  The Etruscans (a pre-Roman civilisation in Italy) had lots of mythical animals that were half-fish, including aigikampoi (fish-tailed goats), leokampoi (fish-tailed lions), taurokampoi (fish-tailed bulls) and pardalokampoi (fish-tailed leopards).

Of course, of all the animals featured on the coins, our favourite is the Hippo! This is why the mascot for the Heritage Lottery Funded Beau Street Hoard Project is Beau the Hippo. So we decided to create our own version of a Hippo Camp.

 

The Hippo-Camp - L-R: Phil, Gordo and Beau

As you can see, Beau and his friends, Phil and Gordo (named after Philip I and Gordian III, the most represented Emperors in the Hoard) are having a lovely time at the Hippo-Camp. This picture was drawn by our volunteer artist-extraordinaire. It looked like so much fun that even our stuffed animal Beau wanted a go!

 

The Re-Enacted Hippo-Camp (with Beau)

A Matter of Mosaics

Working as an intern for a month at the Roman Baths, I was asked to put together a handling table for the Times Table event at the museum on Tuesday evenings. My mind immediately jumped to mosaics and I thought I’d share the information on the blog.

Mosaics are one of the first things that captured my imagination about the ancient world. I remember going to Fishbourne Roman Palace near Chichester when I was younger, where some of the best mosaics in the country are preserved. The Cupid on a Dolphin mosaic is perhaps one of the best known, and best preserved, mosaics from the site.

Cupid on a Dolphin

Not far from Fishbourne is Bignor Roman Villa, also containing some incredibly well- preserved mosaics. If you’re interested in such art work, I would definitely recommend a visit.

The technique of making mosaics was developed by the Greeks, around 400BC. They used small black and white pebbles to create mythological or other pictorial scenes. Soon, they started to use small pieces of marble, glass, pottery and stone, known as tesserae.

This technique was adopted by the Romans and spread with the empire. Local people would be trained in workshops, examples of which have been identified in London and Colchester. It is believed that there was a ‘handbook’ of common motifs used by artists, which would have presumably been cheaper than getting a unique design done, although no copies of such a book have been found.

Mosaics are often associated with bathing in Roman buildings and certainly many mosaics are found on the surface of the hypocaust heating systems. Unfortunately for us, this means they often collapse in on themselves – as has happened here at the East Baths.

East Bath Mosaic

The colours for the individual tesserae were found naturally in the raw materials selected for the mosaics. Glass was rarely used in Roman Britain but does feature in mosaics elsewhere in the empire.

For me, no discussion of mosaics would be complete without mention of my favourite - the Alexander mosaic. Dating from c. 100BC, it is from the House of the Faun, in Pompeii, the largest house uncovered in the town. The presence of this mosaic, as well as others throughout the house, indicates some very wealthy owners indeed…..

Alexander Mosaic

Measuring 5.82 x 3.13m, around 1.5 million tesserae were used. That is a lot of stone, and a very talented artist! The mosaic depicts the Battle of Issus (333 BC), between Alexander the Great and Darius, the Persian king. The one currently in Pompeii is a reconstruction, as the original has been moved to the National Archaeological Museum in Naples.

Next time you’re looking at a mosaic, have a think about both the artist and whoever commissioned it – can you get a sense of how wealthy they were? What does the mosaic tell us about the building and its owner?

Have a look at this website for some excellent images and a brief description of some lovely examples: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/romans/mosaics_gallery.shtml

For more information on Fishbourne: http://www.sussexpast.co.uk/property/site.php?site_id=11

For more information on Bignor: http://bignorromanvilla.co.uk/

Public Programmes at the Roman Baths

If you’ve visited the Roman Baths anytime in these past ten years, and managed to drag your eyes away from the Great Bath long enough to look up - you may have seen a big, arching window. If you were there at the right time, there might have been wide-eyed kids looking back at you. That’s our Education Room.

An Inside View of the Education Room (We're usually much busier!)

Now, seeing as how we’re posting this blog at the end of the summer, you might be wondering - ‘what the heck are they doing writing about volunteering in education now? School’s not in session!’ This is very true. However, as Mark Twain once said, ‘you should never let school get in the way of your education.’

Throughout the summer, we ran loads of hands-on Roman events in our Education Room. Visitors got to hold real Roman tesserae (mosaic stones), count out replica Roman coins, pick up Roman tiles and bricks, smell and touch Roman cooking ingredients, and make their own Votive offerings to give to the goddess of healing, Sulis Minerva.

I think that the best part about the Roman Baths is that they are real. You get to stand where Romans stood, touch things they made, and really picture what it was like in your head a bit. Being encouraged to explore using all your senses? It’s magic.

One of the biggest things we try to do with our public programme is to get you, the visitor, to put yourself in that place a little more. The more personal you let it be, the more it means to you.

Next time you’re in a museum (any museum, not just ours) try focusing on one object. Think about what it would have sounded like or what it would have smelled like. If you can’t touch it, imagine what the texture would have felt like, or how warm it would be next to your skin. Just experience it!

 
Barbara