Details

LOT 0370

Anglo-Saxon Gilt Chip-Carved Bronze Mount

LATER 8TH-9TH CENTURY A.D.

1 3/4 in. (2 3/4 in.) (13.1 grams, 44 mm (50.4 grams total, 71 mm high including stand)).

Irregular fragment from a bronze casket mount formed with four discoid panels each filled with dense regularly-displayed foliage and tendrils with lobe finials; central pierced disc with triquetra motifs in the spandrels; accompanied by a custom-made display stand.

Provenance

Found Saxmundham, Suffolk, in the 1980s.
From the collection of Dirk Kennis, Belgium.

Literature

Cf. Hammond, B., British Artefacts vol.2 - Middle Saxon & Viking, Witham, 2010; Webster, L. & Backhouse, J., The Making of England. Anglo-Saxon Art and Culture AD 600-900, London, 1991, item 138 (Gandersheim), 185.

Footnotes

Details of the decoration recall later 8th century items, such as the lobed tendrils and triquetra motifs on the Franks Casket; the regular disposition of elements recalls a shrine mount from Peterborough (Hammond, 1.12-d) and disc-headed pins (Hammond, 1.10-g, h). 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.