Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art

About this Work

These silver ornaments represent the output of one workshop which operated, it appears, primarily in Ephesus. In material, technique, and style, the fibulae, earrings, pinheads, and brooches are very homogeneous. They exhibit a penchant for rounded surfaces, vigorous linear designs, and clearly relieved secondary areas, such as the feet of the falcons.

Silver is a medium that, like gold, has long been highly valued and widely traded. In the fifth century BCE important silver mines were established in Laurion, near Athens, but, before that time, the Greeks in Ionia (on the west coast of Anatolia) maintained well-known silver workshops. These first millennium workshops followed much older traditions: there is evidence that silver was being mined in Anatolia in the fourth millennium BCE.