a tiny flower, chequers, alternate lines of colour—and then to fuse the whole together into a single rod, the design being increased or diminished in size at will, as the rod was thickened or rolled out into a longer piece. While the rod was still hot, slices of the enamel could be cut from it, each reproducing exactly the same pattern. These slices formed a glass mosaic, and could be inserted on the flat metal surface of a brooch or buckle, and fixed there by the application of heat. Millefiori enamel occurs on several specimens. We even have it side by side with the simpler champlevé enamel on the same ornaments.

Figure 48
FIG. 48. BELT MOUNTING FROM
SOUTH SHIELDSThe various examples of enamel decoration found at Newstead are grouped together in Plate LXXXIX. The largest is the bronze plate (Fig. 25). It is 2 inches long by 1¼ inches wide, and was found near the West Gate, at no great depth from the surface. Probably it was intended for a belt mounting; it is slightly curved as if to fit a girdle, while on the back are two studs to fasten it to leather, and at one end two projections which seem to have formed part of a hinge. The surface of the mounting is divided into six panels, the four outer­most of which are inlaid with champlevé enamel of a sulphur yellow, powdered with spots of brown, while the two central ones are filled with millefiori enamel, the millefiori being arranged in small squares, showing alternately a chequer pattern of pink upon a white ground, and a yellow floweret with a red centre on a black ground.

The methods of enamelling and the patterns employed connect this object with a class of somewhat larger and more important belt mountings, a consideration of which will show how widely the fashion they illustrate was spread along the Roman frontiers. The specimen here reproduced in Fig 48 was found in the Roman fort at the Lawe, South Shields.[1] The central projection is enamelled in dark blue, while the flat plates on either side are covered with tiny flowerets of white on a ground of dark blue, and the 'pelta'-shaped extremities are of sulphur colour with dark brown spots. A

1 Archaeologia Aeliana, vol. x. p. 223. I am indebted to the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-on-Tyne for the use of this illustration.

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