LOT 0372

Anglo-Saxon Bronze Bucket Decorated with Foliage

LATE 5TH-6TH CENTURY A.D.

7 1/4 in. (527 grams, 18.5 cm wide).

Squat vessel, cylindrical in form with lateral D-shaped lugs at the rim, each pierced to accept a bronze drop-handle with returned ends; the outer face with decorative frieze executed in pointillé technique with pellets between the bands consisting of (1) an upper band of running zigzags with fill; (2) clusters of three pellets; (3) sinuous curved line with fronds in the voids; (4) repeat of (2); (5) repeat of (1); underside with three soldered silver panels, possibly ancient repairs. [No Reserve]

Found East Anglia, believed Cambridgeshire, UK.
From a collection acquired on the UK art market from various auction houses and collections mostly before 2000.
From an important Cambridgeshire estate; thence by descent.

See Mango, Mango, Evans & Hughes, A 6th century Mediterranean bucket from Bromeswell Parish, Suffolk, in Antiquity 63, 1989, pp.295-311; Carver, M., Sutton Hoo. A Seventh Century Princely Burial Ground and its Context, London, 2005, pp.485-7; Drandaki, A., "ΥΓΙΕΝΩΝ ΧΡΩ KYPI(E)" A Late Roman brass bucket with a hunting scene published on Academia.edu.

The vessel is formally similar to the group of bronze vessels believed to have been made in Antioch in the 6th century, which have been recovered from 6th-7th century grave fields in England (Carver, 2005; Mango et al, 1989) and from sites in the Mediterranean area (see Drandaki, n.d.). While it lacks the elaborate hunting scenes and Greek inscriptions of the more complex examples, it shows most of the same decorative and constructional features.