Bronze Age

During the later part of the time known as theCopper Age,gold, silver, copper, and tin seem to have been in general use, and this brings us to the period known as the "Bronze Age,which lasted roughly about a thousand years.

During this time the works in metal are remarkable for their excellence, being suitable for their purpose, beautiful in design, and skilfully executed. Many objects were cast as well as wrought, and many pieces were made combining the two processes, as for example, a vase with a beaten body and cast handles which can be seen in the bronze room in the British Museum. The bronze mirrors of the Greeks are artistic examples of skill. Statues of large size were not cast in one piece, but were made by shaping or embossing plates of metal and nailing them on to a wooden core, casting the hands and feet or other small portions separately, then attaching them by cramps and nails.

The face and hands were often carved from ivory and attached in the same way. Statues made in this way, plated with sheet gold and portions of carved ivory added, were known as Chryselephantine work.

Phidias, the sculptor of the Parthenon, was specially famous for statues of this kind.

Metals of many kinds were early very plentiful, and the following verses taken from Homer'sOdyssey,which is supposed to have been written about eleven hundred years before our era, point to a high degree of skill among metal-workers.

The verses refer to the Palace of Alcinous :-

Meanwhile Ulysses at the palace waits

There stops, and anxious with his soul debates,

Fixed in amaze before the royal gates.

The front appeared with radiant splendid gay, Bright as the lamp of night or orb of day. The walls were massy brass; the cornice high, Blue metals crowned, in colours of the sky; Rich plates of gold the folding doors encase, The pillars silver, on a brazen base; Silver the lintels deep projecting o'er, And gold the ringlets that command the door; Two rows of stately dogs on either hand, In sculptured gold and laboured silver stand; These Vulcan formed with art divine, to wait Immortal guardians at Alcinous' gate.

The description of the arms and shield made by Vulcan for Achilles is full of names of metals and processes.

Among the many objects of bronze in the British Museum are some finely modelled handles with iron cores, a bronze belt-plate inlaid with iron, a bronze handle inlaid with silver, some pale bronze mounts probably from a wooden chest and of very thin material embossed with many kinds of fantastic animals, some simple borderings and bosses mainly worked from the back and in low relief; all these objects are dated about 600 to 400 B.C., and can be seen in the bronze room.

The remains of the bronze gates of Shalmaneser II, which are in the basement of the British Museum, are quite an object lesson on the teaching of history by pictorial means carried out in repousse work on bronze, and these date back to 824 B.C.

There are also some examples of work in wood, bronze, ivory, bone, marble, and alabaster that have been turned in a lathe and are dated about 400-300 B.C., all in the room of Greek and Roman life at the same museum; some enamelled bronze ornaments and many vases, figures, etc., which were cast by the lost wax process, and have never been surpassed for beauty of form or executive ability.