_Celtic goldsmiths._ _Gold jewellery._ Thus it happened that by the middle or latter part of the seventh century the Celtic monks of Ireland had learned to produce goldsmiths' work and manuscript illuminations with such marvellous taste and skill as has never been surpassed by any age or country in the world[57]. Not even the finest Greek or Etruscan jewellery, enriched with enamels and studded with gems, can be said to surpass the amazing perfection shown in such a masterpiece of the goldsmith's art as the so-called "Tara brooch"[58] in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy. As a rule the skill of these Irish goldsmiths was devoted to the service of the Church in the manufacture of such objects as croziers, morses (or cope-brooches), shrines, chalices, textus-covers, receptacles for Bishops' bells, and other pieces of ecclesiastical furniture. _Technical processes._ These precious objects are decorated by a variety of technical processes, such as applied filagree, repoussé or beaten reliefs, enamels, both _champlevé_ and _cloisonné_, and inlay of precious stones, especially the carbuncle in minute slices, set in delicate gold _cloisons_ and backed with shining gold-leaf. All these and other decorative processes were employed with unrivalled skill by the monastic goldsmiths of eastern Ireland, a fact which it is important to notice, since nearly all the methods and styles of ornament which occur in the Irish illuminated manuscripts of the same period are clearly derived from prototypes in gold jewelled work. It is in fact often possible to trace in a fine Irish manuscript of the class we are now concerned with, ornamental patterns of several quite distinct classes, one being derived from the patterns of spiral or plaited form produced by soldering delicate gold wire on to plain surfaces of gold, another being copied from gold _champlevé_ enamels, and a third no less clearly derived from the inlaid rectangular bits of carbuncle framed in delicate gold strips or _cloisons_. _Influence on illuminations._ This strongly marked influence of the technique of one art on the designs of another is due to the fact that the arts both of the goldsmith and the manuscript illuminator were carried on side by side in the same monastery or group of monastic dwellings[59], and in some cases we have written evidence that the scribe who wrote and illuminated an elaborate manuscript and the goldsmith who wrought and jewelled its gold cover were one and the same person[60]. _The Book of Kells._