Pictish silversmithing

Ros Ereira, cameo producer

This was a programme that had two cameos in the end, only one of which featured in the programme. The viewers saw Tim Blades making Pictish silverwork and we heard John Kenny play his carnyx – a replica of a war horn found in north-east Scotland around 1816 and dating from 100-300 AD. It wasn't easy to find Pictish cameos, as so little is known about the Picts, but having failed to find anyone who would let me tattoo them, I decided that we could try making a replica of one of the items in the Norrie's Law hoard – a hoard of Pictish silver found nearby in 1882.

This was especially interesting in terms of our site, because the little animal head at the bottom of the silver piece – a dog or otter, perhaps – matches a carving on the wall of one of the caves at Wemyss. Tim was able to show us how the silver would have been worked, as well as how the pieces were enamelled in red, picking out the beautiful designs etched into the surfaces.

The carnyx was a remarkable object. There was no way that we would have had time to make one of our own in the three days available, and unfortunately there wasn't time to feature it in the programme itself, but we were lucky enough to have John Kenny come along with his beautiful replica. The range of sounds it could produce was extraordinary – from trumpet to didgeridoo – and it looked like no instrument I have ever seen before. It was a real privilege to get the chance to hear this unique instrument being played at this beautiful site.

Tim Blades, silversmith

In 1819, at Norrie's Law in Fife, a hoard of silver was found including some strange Pictish plaques made from silver and enamel. Time Team asked me to show how they could be made. They gave me two days, a cave to work in and a bit of help from the Team.

I brought some pieces of scrap silver, as the original silversmiths would have done, and set to work using the most basic furnace – made from two pairs of bellows and a clay-lined hollow in the ground. With Carenza working the bellows we had the silver molten and poured into a brick mould in about ten minutes.

The ingot was then ground smooth and hammered into a flat sheet. This took hours to do and was very noisy! The flattened ingot also came out a bit small, so we used another piece we'd brought along just in case. I cut it to shape and got Victor to engrave it. I am no engraver and Victor said he had not done any for 30 years. They must have had very good eyesight to do the detail.

We found a piece of red glass mosaic to grind to powder (they would have used robbed Roman glass tesserae) and got the charcoal furnace going again. It only took a few minutes to melt the enamel into the pattern.

Then, after a lot of polishing to make it shiny, we produced a fair copy, done with the most basic equipment.

John Kenny, carnyx player

I always love talking about the carnyx, and meeting Time Team at Wemyss Caves was a memorable experience. Perhaps the most fun was trying to play the Blackadder theme on a 2,000-year-old Celtic war horn. This was definitely not for broadcast!

Originally our idea had been to attempt the reconstruction of a carnyx in or near this site. But to do that we would have needed more like three weeks, not three days! Instead, the carnyx I played for Time Team was one made by the artist John Creed, using techniques and materials as close as possible to the original. Since it was completed in 1993, the instrument has seen by thousands of visitors to the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, as well as over 100 concerts and lectures in Europe and the USA.

The story of the discovery, identification, and eventual reconstruction of the carnyx is covered at length on John Kenny's Carnyx and Co website at: http://www.carnyx.musicscotland.com.

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