Londinium, Architecture and the CraftsLethaby, W. R. (William Richard)
History
Londinium, Architecture and the Crafts
Lethaby, W. R. (William Richard)
England -- Antiquities, Roman; London (England) -- Antiquities, Roman; Romans -- England -- London
BY putting together, in our imagination, the mosaic floors, the
fragments of wall paintings, and the marble linings, we can gain a
fairly certain knowledge of what the finer Roman interiors in Londinium
were like, and we may further add to the impression by remembering the
many precious objects in silver, bronze, pottery and glass, which are in
our museums. Broken remnants of wall paintings have been found in large
quantities, and pieces are preserved at the British, the Guildhall, and
the London Museums, also at the Society of Antiquaries. Some account of
several of them was given by Roach Smith in his _Illustrations of Roman
London_, from which Fig. 104 is reduced. The fragment (5, Fig. 104), now
with the others in the British Museum, is part of a pilaster-like strip
about 8 in. wide, of foliage springing symmetrically on each side of a
central vertical stem; it is on a dark ground, and marginal lines divide
it off from a red space which covered the main surfaces of the wall.
This “pilaster” was doubtless one of several. The morsels (6 and 7, Fig.
104) evidently belonged together; the one-sided nature of the design
suggests that it was next the angle of a room; and the loop in the upper
part of 7 looks like the end of a festoon; 9 is somewhat similar; and
the others may all have belonged to “pilaster” strips.
[Illustration:
FIG. 104.
]
The method of dividing up the wall space with strips of plain colour or
with “pilasters” was very general. A simpler scheme was to have marginal
borders only, and these were frequently of considerable width, made up
of many bands and lines of colour. Dadoes were very general, sometimes
only a plain band of colour or a horizontal bar running into the
margins; at other times they were fully decorated: two examples lately
illustrated in _Archæologia_, from Caerwent and Silchester, are really
fine work. The latter had a row of “panels,” alternating square and
round, set with leaves and ears of corn, on a red ground between dark
top and bottom bands.
_Stripes and Margins._—A piece of wall of considerable height was found
at Bignor, having a quadrant skirting at the bottom, a plain dark band
as a low dado, and the space above divided into panels. At Cirencester a
fragment was found which showed a band of fair yellow, edged with
margins of white separating spaces of a cool grey-green. At the Society
of Antiquaries is a piece of plaster showing fine red and green spaces,
divided by a white band and a black line—very simple, but beautiful
colour (Fig. 105).
[Illustration:
FIG. 105.
]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account