Decoration

The bowl’s dark blue colour was created by adding copper to the molten glass. Around the upper part of the bowl is a thin applied trail of glass, arranged in ten tight spirals. The lower part of the bowl is decorated with thirteen vertical loops. These trails were formed by applying molten glass to the outer surface.

Significance

This squat dark-blue jar or bowl was probably a drinking cup. The grave in which it was found contained another similar blue bowl, a bronze bucket and an inlaid bronze plaque. A great deal of our information about Anglo-Saxon England comes from artefacts found in graves. (Cremation was also practiced at this time, but graves containing cremated bone (in specially made urns) are usually less well provided with objects). These grave-goods were believed to accompany the dead into the afterlife. In Anglo-Saxon burials the body was normally clothed and provided with ornaments, weapons or vessels appropriate to its gender and status. Drinking vessels and miniature buckets held food and drink for the sustenance of the deceased. Such burials were a pagan practice and gradually died out once the Anglo-Saxons had been converted to Christianity.