Anglo-Saxon Bronze Girdle Hanger

Displaying incised scroll decoration to the arms and pyramidal faces; four attachment lugs to the reverse. 7.1 grams, 21 mm



Acquired on the UK art market before 2016. Ex property of an American collector.

Plate brooch with raised rim and four applied knops (two absent); central disc surrounding by four radiating arms extending to D-shaped panels at the rim where the knops are attached; the interstitial fields with dense reserved meander-pattern ornament; pierced at the centre with a second eccentrically-placed hole and another offset hole at the end of one of the 'arms'; part of the rim absent; accompanied by a custom-made display stand. 7.73 grams, 29.2 mm (29.19 grams total, 68 mm including stand)



Found Harston, Cambridgeshire, UK. Ex Essex collection formed in the 1980s. From the collection of Dirk Kennis, Belgium.

The 'key pattern' design appears in Irish and Scottish (Pictish) metalwork and carved stone such as the Nigg Stone (Ross Shire, Scotland) as well as in the borders of the Book of Kells. Recorded, studied, and determined by the Secretary of State’s Expert Adviser as an object of cultural interest. The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest (RCEWA) considered an application to export this object. The Committee concluded that the object satisfied the third Waverley criterion and is therefore currently not exportable.

Comprising: trapezoidal headplate with beast-head spurs to the upper angles and concentric panels of Style I ornament; shallow bow with central cell and garnet insert; long footplate with lateral lappets and central lozenge; facing mask above a trapezoidal bar finial; pin-lugs and catch to the reverse. 82 grams, 11.5 cm



Found U.K. British private collection, acquired by 2000.

The meaning of the 'facing mask' motif is probably related to the profile masks so frequently used in Style I art, where the 'pellet' eye is enclosed by an arched frame: the 'facing mask' repeats this motif to produce a pair of eyes in a doubled 'bow'. An element of visual 'riddling' is no doubt present: the design is neither one thing nor the other, but includes elements of both. Distribution of great square-headed brooches was initially concentrated along the valleys of the Rivers Trent, Thames and Severn, though it was later confined to the East Midlands and East Anglia (Hines, 1997, figs. 101, 102).