# The Corbridge Lanx > Unknown Late Roman silversmith (Mediterranean, North African, or Asia Minor workshop, disputed) - 4th century AD > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/unknown-late-roman-silversmith-corbridge-lanx/corbridge-lanx-british-museum/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-04 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unknown Late Roman silversmith (Mediterranean, North African, or Asia Minor workshop, disputed) - **Date:** 4th century AD - **Medium:** Silver, worked in relief (repousse/chasing; a plate-specific technical account of the working method was not found in the sources consulted) - **Dimensions:** 503 x 380 mm (British Museum measurement); weight 4600 g. An earlier published figure of 482.5 x 381 mm appears in the Roman Inscriptions of Britain catalogue entry; the British Museum's own current record is treated here as authoritative. - **Object type:** Silver - **Period:** Roman Britain, 4th century AD - **Current location:** British Museum, London (on display, Room 49, Roman Britain, Display Case 17) - **Attribution:** unknown ## Summary A large rectangular silver dish, 4600 grammes of Roman silver worked in relief with a scene of Apollo at a shrine flanked by Artemis and Athena and two other female figures whose identity is still argued over. It was found by a nine-year-old girl, Isabel Cutter, in the bank of the River Tyne at Corbridge in February 1735, immediately became the subject of one of English law's founding cases on treasure trove, and then passed into the private collection of the Dukes of Northumberland at Alnwick Castle, where it stayed for close to two hundred and fifty years.Three other silver vessels were reportedly recovered from the same stretch of riverbank between 1731 and 1760. All are lost. Only the lanx survived, and only because it was fought over in Chancery within months of being found rather than melted down like at least one of its companions. The British Museum bought it from the 11th Duke of Northumberland in 1993 after two spells on loan going back to the Second World War.What the scene actually shows has never been settled. The god and two of the goddesses are secure; the two remaining women are not, and neither is the dish's place of manufacture. This record treats both as open questions rather than closing them for the sake of a tidy caption. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **4th century AD** Unknown workshop, place of manufacture disputed `[unknown]` (manufacture) Dated to the 4th century AD on stylistic grounds. The British Museum's own record gives the production place only as 'Africa (? North Africa?)', 'Turkey (?)' and 'Mediterranean (?)' - three unresolved possibilities, not a finding. Ephesos has been proposed for its cults of Artemis, Apollo and Leto, but this rests on subject matter rather than technical or archaeometric evidence. - **4th century AD-1735** Unknown - buried or lost near Corbridge as part of an apparent hoard `[unknown]` (deposition and loss) How and when the dish came to be in or near the River Tyne at Corbridge is not documented. It is inferred, from other silver reportedly recovered nearby over the following decades, that it was part of a larger fourth-century deposit gradually exposed by river erosion, but no excavation record exists and the inference is the field's, not this record's invention. - **10 February 1735** Isabel Cutter, finder `[documented]` (discovery) Found 'appearing white above the earth' in the north bank of the Tyne about 150 yards below Corbridge bridge, while the finder was gathering firewood. A Corbridge manor Court Leet presentment, quoted by Haverfield (1914) from the original record, names the finder as 'Isabel Cutter, daughter of Thomas Cutter of Corbridge, blacksmith, aged nine years'. The British Museum's own catalogue names the finder identically as 'Miss Isabel Cutter'. Wikipedia and several sites that follow it instead describe her father as 'a local cobbler' - a claim this record could not verify against any primary source and which conflicts with the manor court record as reported by Haverfield. This record follows the documented court record (blacksmith) and flags the cobbler claim as an unverified, likely erroneous, popular variant. - **15 February 1735-1 March 1735** Isaac Cookson, Newcastle goldsmith `[documented]` (sale (in two parts)) Thomas Cutter first broke off and sold the plate's rim or footstand (8 ounces) on 15 February for thirty-six shillings, then sold the remainder on 1 March for thirty guineas - a total of about GBP 33 6s for 148 troy ounces of silver. The Court Leet later fined Cutter sixpence and declared the plate treasure trove belonging to the lord of the manor. This is also the 'Cookson' of the resulting Chancery case, Duke of Somerset v Cookson. - **1735-12 November 1735** Algernon Seymour (styled Earl of Hertford; from 1748, 7th Duke of Somerset), as lord of the manor of Corbridge `[documented]` (treasure trove claim and Chancery suit) Algernon Seymour, lord of the manor of Corbridge (he did not become Duke of Somerset himself until his father's death in 1748, but is conventionally referred to by that later title in accounts of the case), claimed the lanx as treasure trove. Cookson resisted and sought compensation rather than surrender. Lord Chancellor Talbot granted an injunction on 19 July 1735 and the equity suit concluded on 12 November 1735, after which Somerset's agents took possession and compensated Cookson beyond his original outlay (the amount is not given in the sources consulted). The case, Duke of Somerset v Cookson (1735), is treated by legal historians as a founding authority on Chancery's power to order the specific return of a unique chattel rather than mere damages, and later Percy-family treasure trove claims to the same manor are read by scholars in light of it. - **1735-1750** Algernon Seymour, Earl of Hertford, from 1748 7th Duke of Somerset `[documented]` (possession) Held by Seymour following the 1735 decree. In 1736 he commissioned or permitted an antiquarian record of the piece: a drawing by William Shaftoe, engraved by Gerard van der Gucht, dedicated to Somerset and inscribed with the finder's account and the plate's dimensions ('20 Inches by 15'). - **1750-1993** Dukes of Northumberland (Percy family), Alnwick Castle `[documented]` (inheritance into the Percy collection) Algernon Seymour's daughter and heir, Elizabeth Seymour, married Sir Hugh Smithson. On Seymour's death in 1750, Smithson inherited the Percy earldom of Northumberland by special remainder through his wife, changed his name and arms to Percy, and was created 1st Duke of Northumberland in 1766. This is the documented mechanism by which the Percy/Northumberland family came to hold what had been Seymour property; every source consulted states that the lanx passed into Northumberland ownership and remained there until 1993, but none of the sources found for this record states the exact year the object itself changed hands within that inheritance, as distinct from the title and estates generally. That specific date is recorded here as unknown. - **July 1940-16 September 1949** On loan to the British Museum `[documented]` (loan) The British Museum's own acquisition notes record a first loan running from July 1940 to 16 September 1949 - almost certainly connected to wartime and immediate postwar arrangements for evacuated or centrally held collections, though the museum's record does not itself explain the reason for the loan or its 1949 return. This loan does not appear in most popular accounts of the object's history, which move directly from 1735 to a single loan beginning in the late 1970s. - **1949-1978** Dukes of Northumberland, Alnwick Castle `[unknown]` (possession) No source consulted explains why the 1940-49 loan ended when it did or what happened to the object between 1949 and its return to public display in the late 1970s beyond an inference that it remained at Alnwick. - **1978-1993** On loan to the British Museum `[disputed]` (loan) The British Museum's own collection record states the second loan began 'again since 1978'. Several secondary sources (repeated across press and heritage-fund summaries) instead give 1979 as the year the 'late Duke of Northumberland' placed the lanx on loan for display in the Roman Britain gallery. This record follows the museum's own primary record (1978) and flags the one-year discrepancy rather than silently picking the more commonly repeated figure. - **April 1993-present** British Museum, London `[documented]` (purchase) Purchased from Henry Percy, 11th Duke of Northumberland, registered 1993,0401.1. The Art Fund states the total acquisition cost as GBP 1,858,000, of which the Art Fund itself (as the National Art Collections Fund) contributed GBP 150,000; other summaries round this to 'in excess of GBP 1.8 million'. The National Heritage Memorial Fund's own specific grant figure could not be independently confirmed: its project page (memorialfund.org.uk, formerly nhmf.org.uk) returned an access error (HTTP 403) on direct fetch, and only a search-engine summary of it was available, which is flagged here as a source needing a direct primary check. The British Museum's own funder list also credits British Museum Friends (as the British Museum Society) and the Trustees of the British Museum itself as contributors. ## Open questions - Was Isabel Cutter's father a blacksmith or a cobbler? The only primary source located, a manor Court Leet presentment quoted by Haverfield (1914), says blacksmith; the widely repeated modern claim that he was a cobbler could not be traced to any primary source and may be a later error that has propagated through Wikipedia and sites that copy it. - Who are the two central female figures in the scene? Neither the British Museum's own tentative Leto/Ortygia reading nor Percy Gardner's 1914 Judgment-of-Paris-at-Delphi proposal has become a scholarly consensus, and O. Brendel's 1941 study, still the standard reference, left the question open. - Where was the dish actually made? North Africa, Asia Minor (Ephesos has been specifically proposed), and 'the Mediterranean' generally are all live candidates in the sources consulted, and none is preferred by the British Museum's own catalogue record. - What happened to the other silver vessels reportedly found near the same spot between 1731 and 1760? All are untraced; one is recorded as deliberately melted down for its metal value. - Is the Isaac Cookson who bought the plate from Thomas Cutter in 1735 the same Isaac Cookson (1679-1743) who founded the Newcastle iron, lead, and glass business that became the Cookson dynasty? Both were Newcastle men of business active in exactly this period, but no source consulted for this record explicitly confirms they are one and the same. - Exactly when, within the 1750 Percy inheritance of the Somerset estates and titles, did physical custody of the lanx itself pass from the Seymour to the Percy family? Every source agrees on the eventual fact of Percy ownership; none dates the object's own transfer specifically. - Did the second British Museum loan begin in 1978, as the museum's own collection record states, or in 1979, as several secondary sources state? The discrepancy is one year and unresolved in the sources consulted. - What was the National Heritage Memorial Fund's specific contribution to the 1993 purchase price? Its own project page could not be accessed directly during this research (HTTP 403 on every fetch attempt) and only a search-engine summary was available; a direct primary check is needed. - Has the dish's silver ever been subjected to a published modern metallurgical or isotopic analysis? None was located in this research, despite this being one of the few methods that could independently test the competing places-of-manufacture proposals. ## Sources - [1] British Museum, Collection Online, 'lanx' (The Corbridge Lanx), museum number 1993,0401.1. Accessed directly via the museum's own collection database on 2026-09-04 (direct automated fetch of britishmuseum.org returns HTTP 403; content verified via a live browser session against the museum's own site). - [2] Wikipedia, 'Corbridge Lanx'. Tertiary source consolidating British Museum material; flagged for replacement with the primary academic literature (Haverfield 1914, Brendel 1941, Toynbee and Painter 1986) wherever this record cites it. - [3] Art Fund, 'The Corbridge Lanx'. - [4] National Heritage Memorial Fund (now trading as the National Heritage Memorial Fund at memorialfund.org.uk), 'Corbridge Lanx'. The page itself returned HTTP 403 on direct and browser fetch attempts during research; only a search-engine summary of its content could be consulted. Flagged for a direct primary re-check. - [5] F. Haverfield, 'Roman Silver in Northumberland', Journal of Roman Studies 4 (1914), pp. 1-12. Primary academic source for the manor court presentment, the sale to Isaac Cookson, the Chancery proceedings, and the other silver vessels reportedly found nearby between 1731 and 1760. - [6] Roman Inscriptions of Britain, RIB 2414.38, 'Corbridge Lanx'. - [7] Norma M. Dawson, 'The Double Life of Duke of Somerset v Cookson, or a Legal Excavation of the Corbridge Lanx', Journal of Legal History 35:3 (2014), pp. 258-280. Abstract and publication metadata consulted; full text is paywalled and was not read in full for this record. - [8] O. Brendel, 'The Corbridge Lanx', Journal of Roman Studies 31 (1941), pp. 100-127. The founding modern scholarly study of the dish's iconography; abstract/extract consulted via publisher listing, full text paywalled and not read in full for this record. - [9] J.M.C. Toynbee and K.S. Painter, 'Silver Picture Plates of Late Antiquity: A.D. 300 to 700', Archaeologia 108 (1986), pp. 15-65, the standard catalogue of the class of object to which the Corbridge Lanx belongs. Catalogue listing and description consulted; full text not read in full for this record. - [10] Wikimedia Commons, file description page for the lead image, reproducing the British Museum's own curatorial text in full, including the Leto/Ortygia identification proposal and the comparison with the Mildenhall Treasure. - [11] Edithorial (blog), 'Nine-Year-Old Girl Finds Roman Treasure in 1735'. A secondary source, but one that quotes the manor court deposition directly and identifies the Wikipedia 'cobbler' claim as inconsistent with the primary record; cross-checked here against Haverfield 1914, which independently confirms 'blacksmith'. - [12] Prints and Principles, 'Gerard van der Gucht's etching, "The Corbridge Lanx", 1736'. - [13] Thorvaldsens Museum Catalogue, entry E1482, for Gerard Vandergucht's 1737 print after William Shaftoe's drawing, quoting its dedication and inscription in full. - [14] National Trust Collections, 'Tray', object 347543.1 (Cotehele), a Chinese export porcelain tea tray of c. 1737-1748 copying van der Gucht's engraving of the Corbridge Lanx. - [15] Wikipedia, 'Risley Park Lanx'. - [16] Wikipedia, 'Shaun Greenhalgh', for the 1990s forged replacement of the (separately) lost Risley Park Lanx, exposed in 2005 after display at the British Museum from 1992. - [17] Wikipedia, 'Algernon Seymour, 7th Duke of Somerset'. - [18] Percy Family History, 'Percy to Seymour. Smithson to Percy'. - [19] Wikipedia, 'Hugh Percy, 1st Duke of Northumberland' (born Sir Hugh Smithson). - [20] Wikipedia, 'Mildenhall Treasure', for the comparanda dish (the Great Dish, or Oceanus Dish) used for comparison of picture-plate form and mixed pagan/Christian hoard content. - [21] inflationtool.com, UK inflation calculator, value of GBP 1 from 1993 to present, used for the period-money comparison in this record with the calculation method (cumulative CPI-based price index change) stated explicitly. - [22] Co-Curate (Newcastle University), resource page for 'The Corbridge Lanx, 4th century AD, from Corbridge, Northumberland, Roman Britain, British Museum'. - [23] Wikipedia, 'Isaac Cookson (foundryman)', consulted only to flag an unconfirmed possible identity with the Newcastle goldsmith Isaac Cookson of the 1735 case; the two are not confirmed as the same individual in the sources consulted. - [24] Wikimedia Commons, Category:Corbridge Lanx, and the extended metadata (extmetadata) of each file in it, queried directly via the Commons API to verify licence and to confirm each image depicts the genuine British Museum original rather than the modern replica at Corbridge Roman Town Museum. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. 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