Anglo-Saxon and Irish jewelry is famous for delicate filigree, fine enamels, and flat garnets used in a very decorative way.  Niello was also employed to some extent.  It is easy, in looking from the Bell of St. Patrick to the Book of Kells, to see how the illuminators were influenced by the goldsmiths in early times,—­in Celtic and Anglo-Saxon work.

[Illustration:  Saxon brooch]

The earliest forms of brooches were the annular,—­that is, a long pin with a hinged ring at its head for ornament, and the “penannular,” or pin with a broken circle at its head.  Through the opening in the circle the pin returns, and then with a twist of the ring, it is held more firmly in the material.  Of these two forms are notable examples in the Arbutus brooch and the celebrated Tara brooch.  The Tara brooch is a perfect museum in itself of the jeweller’s art.  It is ornamented with enamel, with jewels set in silver, amber, scroll filigree, fine chains, Celtic tracery, moulded glass—­nearly every branch of the art is represented in this one treasure, which was found quite by accident near Drogheda, in 1850, a landslide having exposed the buried spot where it had lain for centuries.  As many as seventy-six different kinds of workmanship are to be detected on this curious relic.

[Illustration:  The Tara brooch]

At a great Exhibition at Ironmonger’s Hall in 1861 there was shown a leaden fibula, quite a dainty piece of personal ornament, in Anglo-Saxon taste, decorated with a moulded spiral meander.  It was found in the Thames in 1855, and there are only three other similar brooches of lead known to exist.

Of the Celtic brooches Scott speaks: 

    “...the brooch of burning gold
  That clasps the chieftain’s mantle fold,
  Wrought and chased with rare device,
  Studded fair with gems of price.”

One of the most remarkable pieces of Celtic jewelled work is the bell of St. Patrick, which measures over ten inches in height.  This saint is associated with several bells:  one, called the Broken Bell of St. Brigid, he used on his last crusade against the demons of Ireland; it is said that when he found his adversaries specially unyielding, he flung the bell with all his might into the thickest of their ranks, so that they fled precipitately into the sea, leaving the island free from their aggressions for seven years, seven months, and seven days.

One of St. Patrick’s bells is known, in Celtic, as the “white toned,” while another is called the “black sounding.”  This is an early and curious instance of the sub-conscious association of the qualities of sound with those of colour.  Viollet le Duc tells how a blind man was asked if he knew what the colour red was.  He replied, “Yes:  red is the sound of the trumpet.”  And the great architect himself, when a child, was carried by his nurse into the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, where he cried with terror because he fancied that the various organ notes which he heard were being hurled at him by the stained glass windows, each one represented by a different colour in the glass!