Bronzes

“ If we suppose the statue, after it was nearly completed in plaster or clay, not to have been rasped down but simply to have been covered with wax, we shall see that the result would be that the bronze cast would be a little fuller in size and thicker in proportions than the original model. And this is a peculiar characteristic of the ancient bronzes, especially to be observed in the limbs and joints, which are generally larger and puffier in bronze than in marble statues. ”

“ The classic bronzes were almost invariably conceptions drawn from imagination, but the beautiful forms of the athletes and Greek maidens helped the artist in his estimate of the deities he personified. ”

“ Bronze. Antique bronze was composed of tin and copper; the modern bronze contains also zinc and lead, by which the fluidity is increased, and the brittleness diminished.
Bronzes (ancient Chinese) are rarely seen out of the province of Fokien. The lines of metal are small and delicate, and are made to represent flowers, trees, animals of various kinds, and sometimes Chinese characters. Some fine bronzes, inlaid with gold, are met with in this province. As a general rule, Chinese bronzes are more remarkable for their peculiar and certainly not very handsome form than for anything else. ”

“ Bronze is wanting in Africa; in America, with the exception of Peru and Mexico; in the north of Sweden and Norway, and, I believe, in the greater part of the northern districts of Russia and Siberia, though with regard to Russian and Siberian bronzes, our information is still very deficient. And here I may observe that I speak only of bronze as applied to tools and weapons ”

“ Several other analyses of bronzes from various sources have been recently published. Thus Natterer (“Monatshefte für Chemie,” XXI. 256, 1900; also “Chem. Centralblatt,” 1900, I. 1262) examined a corroded bronze statuette from Ephesus. ”

“ Reference has already been made to the rare temple pieces and sets which have been looted or purchased from Asiatic countries, so many of which are of rare cloissonné enamels. Some of these of Japanese origin are mentioned in Chapter XIV. Of the minor bronzes, replicas of temple relics, there are many beautiful koros or incense burners. Other bronzes serve the purpose of ornament in the Western countries to which they have found their way. In Fig. 68 is shown a beautiful bronze. The sacred carp is inlaid with gold and silver and is exceptionally well finished. ”

“ There is a tradition that some ancient bronzes had a considerable admixture of gold, but no analysis has showed more than an occasional trace of the precious metal, and not more than two per cent of silver has ever been found. ”

“ It is looked on as a great addition to the beauty of the bronze, especially when it is of the green colour found on antique bronzes (see Bronze) . By extension, the word is applied to the discoloured or incrusted surface of marble, flint, &c., acquired after long burial in the ground or exposure to the air, and also to the special colour given to wood surfaces by time. ”

“ The most difficult to imitate are the excavated Greek, Roman or Etruscan bronzes, especially when the humidity of the soil or some peculiar condition has produced a kind of patina possessing241 the appearance of enamel. Among the artificial hues of Renaissance bronze, the brownish tint of the Paduan school is characteristic, and worthy of note are some of the blackish specimens of Venetian bronze, as well as the whole emporium of samples of the versatile Florentine school. ”

“ Many varieties of bronze have been produced within the last few years that possess features strongly distinguishing them from the ancient alloys, and some very remarkable qualities as compared with them, in view of which they are frequently used in place of even iron and steel, The bronzes of the ancients were composed of copper and tin, as is also what is now regarded as bronze pure and simple, mixed in proportions varying according to the purpose for which the compound is intended. ”

“ I saw in those shops some of the most beautiful silks and embroideries that I ever did see, and I went into a lacquer shop where there wuz the most elegant furniture and rich bronzes inlaid with gold and silver. They make the finest bronzes in the world; a little pair of vases wuz fifteen hundred dollars and you couldn’t get ’em for less. But why shouldn’t there be beautiful things in a country where every one is a artist? ”

“ The next day I went to see Dolzhikov at one o'clock. The man servant showed me into a charming room, which was the engineer's drawing-room and study. Everything in it was charming and tasteful, and to a man like myself, unused to such things, very strange. Costly carpets, huge chairs, bronzes, pictures in gold and velvet frames ; photographs on the walls of beautiful women, clever, handsome faces, and striking attitudes; from the drawing-room a door led straight into the garden, by a veranda, and I saw lilac and a table laid for breakfast, rolls, and a bunch of roses ”

“ When he bought any article he gave just what the shopkeeper liked to ask for it and his purchase remained afterwards in a box in the coach-house till it disappeared altogether. Or going into a print shop, he would slowly and attentively examine the engravings and the bronzes, making various remarks on them, and would buy a common frame or a box of wretched prints. At home he had pictures always of large dimensions but of inferior quality ”

“ On the other hand, the numerous finds of bronze weapons which have been discovered have never been associated with iron, except in cases where the nature of the iron implements shows them to have belonged to a period of transition. (6) The pottery associated with bronze-finds is superior to that found with stone implements, but inferior to that of the iron age, and the potter’s wheel was unknown during the stone and bronze ages. (7) Silver is found associated with iron, but rarely if ever with stone or bronze. (8) No coins or inscriptions of any kind have been found with bronze implements. ”

“ Bronze spread to Europe from south to north along the established trade routes; and the theory, once held, that a Bronze Age developed independently among the rude races of Northern Europe is no longer accepted. The discovery of well-wrought weapons in early graves shows206 that the inhabitants of the British Isles first knew bronze, in its best form, as a foreign introduction, before they manufactured the metal for themselves. ”

“ In the first place, the color of the material is expressive. The black and gold of bronze have a depth and intensity, the whiteness of marble a coldness, clarity, and, serenity, inescapable. The weight and hardness, or lightness and softness, of the material, also count. If people do not feel the expressiveness of these qualities directly, they nevertheless do feel it indirectly, whenever they appreciate the superior fitness of marble and bronze for the embodiment of the heroic and supernatural, and of the light and fragile porcelain for the more fleeting and trivial phases of life. ”

“ It is necessary in this place to give some account of the bronze of the ancients, a compound fulfilling the most important uses in Greece and Rome. “Money, vases, and utensils of all sorts, whether for domestic or sacrificial purposes, ornaments, arms offensive and defensive, furniture, tablets for inscriptions, musical instruments, and, indeed, every object to which it could be applied, was made of bronze.” [3] Zinc, like steel, was unknown to the ancients. ”

“ The celt and spear-head follow, gracefully formed and looped in the double mould of stone or bronze. The taste of the more experienced metallurgist also finds room for the exercise of the decorative arts, and transfers to the bronze implements the incised and chevron patterns which were first introduced on his vessels of unbaked clay. Still further evidences of progress will come under our notice, showing the extent to which civilisation had advanced before the late and more familiar metal superseded the works of bronze. ”

“ Some of the moulds in which the bronze instruments were cast, and 'tags,' as they are called, of bronze, which are formed in the hole through which the fused metal was poured, have been found. The number and variety of objects belonging to the age of bronze indicates its long duration, as does the progress in the arts implied by the rudeness of the earlier tools, often mere repetitions of those of the stone age, as contrasted with the more skilfully worked weapons of a later stage of the same period. ”

“ At the frontier of history, in each country, we find that the dwellers were acquainted with the use of iron, and had found it to be the most convenient material for the manufacture of cutting weapons and implements. Before this the voice of tradition points out that bronze was the only material used for these purposes, and stone before bronze. These three stages of human culture, or the ages of iron, bronze, and stone, have been fully verified by investigations which have been made in various parts of Europe, into the prehistoric habitations and burial-places of man. ”

“ For all ordinary purposes of utility it is the common metal used. A bronze or copper bowl is found in almost every tomb; bronze bolts remain in the pieces of marble used for tesselating; bronze rings sometimes strengthen the cones used for ornamenting walls; bronze weapons and instruments are, as we have seen, common, and in the same material have been found chains, nails, toe and finger rings, armlets, bracelets, and fish-hooks. ”

“ On the contrary, instead of the simple and uniform implements and ornaments of stone, bone, and amber, we meet suddenly with a number and variety of splendid weapons, implements, and jewels of bronze, and sometimes indeed with jewels of gold. The transition is so abrupt that from the antiquities we are enabled to conclude that the Bronze Period must have commenced with the irruption of a new race of people, possessing a higher degree of cultivation than the early inhabitants. ”

“ Bronze Age, which means that the folk were still using stone for their tools and weapons, but were just beginning to employ bronze, an alloy of copper and tin. It is not surprising that bronze has not hitherto been found in the dwellings; it was far too valuable to be left about in such a manner as to be lost, and no surprise need be expressed that it has been discovered in sepulchral monuments appertaining to the same people, for nothing was too good as an offering for the use of the dead in the happy hunting-grounds above. ”

“ It would be a mistake, however, to refer all antiquities of bronze to the Bronze age. Vessels, rings, buckles, needles, and the like, were still made of bronze after the end of this period, just as they are even in our own day, but generally of a somewhat different composition from that which prevailed then. "To this age belong only weapons and edge-tools made of bronze, and such vessels and ornaments as are usually found with them." ”

“ BRONZE AGE, the name given by archaeologists to that stage in human culture, intermediate between the Stone and Iron Ages, when weapons, utensils and implements were, as a general rule, made of bronze. The term has no absolute chronological value, but marks a period of civilization through which it is believed that most races passed at one time or another. The "finds" of stone and bronze, of bronze and iron, and even of stone and iron implements together in tumuli and sepulchral mounds, suggest that in many countries the three stages in man's progress overlapped. ”

“ When, however, in various countries we find interments and even cemeteries in which bronze and iron weapons and instruments are intermingled, and the forms of those in bronze are what we have learnt from other sources to regard as the latest, while the forms in iron are not those for which that metal is best adapted, but are almost servile copies of the bronze instruments found with them, the proof of the one having succeeded the other is almost absolutely conclusive. ”

“ An age when iron superseded bronze for weapons and cutting tools, although bronze still remained in use for ornaments. This age continued down to what we call the Historical Period, and embraces our present civilization; its more ancient remains are mixed with coins of the Gauls, Greeks, and Romans.
The Bronze Period has been one of the perplexing problems of European scientists. Articles of bronze are found over nearly all that continent, but in especial abundance in Ireland and Scandinavia. They indicate very considerable refinement and civilization upon the part of the people who made them ”

“ Such was the state of ancient society when a knowledge of bronze was introduced—a discovery which consigned stone, hitherto the substance most commonly made use of to advance human interests, to a subordinate position, and opened up for man the exhaustless mineral stores of nature. ”

“ Altogether, if history is to count for anything, there can be no doubt that in Greece and Italy, the earliest civilized countries of Europe, the use of bronze preceded that of iron, and therefore that there was in each case a Bronze Age of greater or less duration preceding the Iron Age. ”

“ We have been compelled to dwell to some extent on the general considerations which bear upon the introduction of bronze among the ancient inhabitants of Europe who succeeded the men of the Stone Age. In the chapters which follow we intend as far as possible to trace out the picture of that period of man's history, which is called the Bronze Epoch, and constitutes the first division of the Age of Metals. ”