Enamel was first used on small pieces of jewellery, and has often disintegrated in ancient pieces that have been buried. Consistent and frequent use of champlevé technique is first seen in the
La Tène style of early
Celtic art in Europe, from the 3rd or 2nd century BC, where the predominant colour was a red, possibly intended as an imitation of red
coral (as used on the
Witham Shield). The base was usually
bronze. The "Insular Celts" of the British Isles made widespread use of the technique, seen as highlights on the relief decoration of the
Battersea Shield and other pieces. However this was technically not true enamel in the usual sense of the word, as the glass was only heated until it became a soft paste before being pushed into place. This is sometimes informally known as "sealing-wax" enamelling, and may be described as "glass inlay" or similar terms. True enamelling technique, where glass paste is put into place and fired until it liquifies, was learnt from the Romans. The earliest literary description of enamel is from the Greek
sophist Philostratus III, who wrote in his
Icones (Bk I, 28), describing polychrome horse-harness: "It is said that the barbarians in the Ocean pour these colours on heated bronze and that they adhere, become as hard as stone and preserve the designs that are made on them". , 2nd century AD Romano-British, with enamel in four colours. Celtic curvilinear styles were highly effective in enamel and were used throughout the Roman period, when they largely disappeared in other media. The
Staffordshire Moorlands Pan is a 2nd-century
trulla with large enamel roundels in four colours of enamel, commissioned by or for Draco, a soldier, possibly a Greek, as a souvenir of his service on
Hadrian's Wall. It is one of a group of similar enamelled vessels found in Britain and northern Gaul. Smaller items from similar contexts include
brooches and other jewellery, and mounts for horse harness as described by Philostratus. Around the end of the Roman Empire, new forms arose: the terminals of the increasingly fancy
penannular brooches of the British Isles become decorated with champlevé, as do other fasteners and fittings, and the mounts of
hanging bowls. These last have long puzzled art historians, as not only is their purpose unclear, but they are primarily found in
Anglo-Saxon and Viking contexts, including three at
Sutton Hoo, but their decoration uses predominantly Celtic motifs. One of the Sutton Hoo bowls had been repaired, but in a different, Germanic style. Altogether, production of the various types of hanging bowls covers the period 400–1100. While the leading expert,
Rupert Bruce-Mitford, sees the bowls as the products of "Celtic" workshops, perhaps often in Ireland, in the same period the use of large areas of champlevé in the most ornate
Celtic brooches reduces. However, gem-like enamel highlights, some in
millefiori, are still found. In
Anglo-Saxon art, as in that of most of Europe and the Byzantine world, this was the period when cloisonné technique dominated enamelling. ==Romanesque==