Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 105. (Budapest, 2006)
MARIANNA DÁGI: Training the Eye: Technical Details as Clues in the Attribution of Ancient Jewellery
Detai led study of these pieces began as a preliminary step in the preparation of the Collection's jewellery catalogue. The approach chosen was partly defined by important progress made over the last twenty years in the rapidly growing area of ancient jewellery research. 4 The possibility that master-hands might be identifiable in ancient jewellery as well as in vase-painting was actually raised two decades ago.- Since then, however, hardly anyone seems to have tried to pursue the promising line of inquiry opened up by Dyfri Williams in a ground-breaking 1988 article; indeed, most subsequent work on the matter was published by Williams himself/' His method has changed and developed visibly with the progress of his research. What in the beginning was a purely art-historical, style-based approach has expanded to incorporate arguments from technique as well, even if Williams himself warns against overdependence on the latter. One important distinguishing feature of the pieces attributed by him is that they are 'individual jew r ellery' in the modern sense of the word: that is to say, they were produced via a process of individual design and construction, probably to the client's specifications, in one or a handful oi pieces. A further important shared feature of these pieces is that they are generally well provenanced, belonging either to the same findspot, or to the material record of a single region. In terms of attribution, there are, according to Williams, two ways to proceed: "One method is to look at a large burial group that is likely to contain a parure by a single craftsman or workshop.... A second approach is to examine a particular form, whether earring, necklace or bracelet, and try to identify pieces that are so similar that they should be the products of the same jeweller or workshop." s In the case of the pieces in the Collection of Classical Antiquities in Budapest, only the second approach offered a way forward —with the significant difference that, although the examined earrings belong to a single type, they are not individual, but rather series-produced pieces. Having studied the methods and characteristic work-processes of jewellery making in some detail, I was reasonably confident that, pace Williams, one could successfully identify workshops and master-hands using a method based primarily on consideration of technical features. Indeed, from this standpoint, the very fact that the artefacts themselves were the products of series production has proved to be a distinct advantage, thanks to the way in which particular details repeat themselves from piece to piece. The starting point here has been a thorough examination by microscope of the manufacturing techniques employed in each case, followed by the documentation of these details using a digital camera. The primary aim was merely to establish whether it is indeed possible to identify certain technical features which can then serve to ground conclusions about connections between individual pieces. During examination of the artefacts, it became clear that even those
