Basse Yutz Flagons

Basse Yutz Flagons

The Basse Yutz Flagons as displayed in the British Museum
Material	Copper alloy, coral, glass and resin
Size	40 cm high
Created	mid-5th century BCE
Discovered	Basse Yutz, France
Present location	British Museum, London
Registration	Palart.550

The Basse Yutz Flagons are a pair of Iron Age ceremonial drinking vessels that date from the mid 5th century BCE. Since their discovery in ill-documented circumstances in the 1920s and their subsequent purchase by the British Museum, they have been described as "great masterpieces" that "combine most of the key features of early Celtic Art". They are in many respects very similar to the Dürrnberg Flagon found in Austria.

The almost identical pair of flagons imitate the shape of contemporary Etruscan flagons and are made of a copper alloy that was skilfully beaten into shape from a single sheet of metal. The base was cast to size and decorated with 120 pieces of red coral and glass and then attached using resin. Resin is also used to coat the inside, which makes the flagon watertight. The cast spout and lid is attached using pins into a cutout made in the copper sheet body. X-rays reveal that the resin and the pins were the only materials used by the artisans to assemble these artefacts; although there is some evidence of solder this is 20th century. The bases were apparently left open until the end of construction and the flagon were only water-tight because of a coating of resin over the whole inside of the vessel. There had evidently been well-used, and the chains now attaching the stoppers on the lids are later additions, replacing earlier fittings.

The flagons are richly decorated with glass and coral inlays and a range of animals on the lid. Time has faded the coral but the pieces would have been brightly coloured. The handle is formed as a dog, terminating at the bottom with a human face. The idea of a dog or other animal for a handle comes from Greek and Etruscan culture, as does the motif of two crouching animals lying around the rim, and the head at the bottom of the handle, but the duck on the spout is a Celtic addition to the scheme. The eyes of the duck and the dogs have been finished by using a complex drill bit and they were drilled by the same person. Both vessels measure just over 40 cm in height. The drinking vessels were found with a pair of Etruscan bronze stamnoi or vessels for wine-mixing that date from the same period (also now in the British Museum).

Other comparable Celtic adaptions of the classical flagon shape have survived. Among them, a late 5th-century example from a chariot-burial at Dürrnberg (now Keltenmuseum in Hallein, Austria) has similar animals to the three dogs, and human heads at the bottom of the handle as well as on the lid, but here the whole body is decorated with raised vertical ribs with an elegant abstracted design suggesting plant-forms at top and bottom. The flagon only uses bronze. Other examples are from Kleinaspergle, Hohenasperg, near Stuttgart, and Borsch.