Roman Bronze Fan-Tailed Brooch

Part of a wax tablet with two holes in the frame for fastening, Greek writing. 45.45 grams, 18.6 x 7.2 cm



Property of a North London gentleman; previously in the Dean family collection since 1975.

Wax tablets written in Greek or Latin, were used by Romans as account registers (codices accepti et expensi); for transactions (for example, the tablets of the banker Lucius Caecilius Iucundus found in Pompeii); for lists of goods, inventories, and notes to be kept and archived; for Roman magistrates to annotate the salient events of their bureaucratic activities; for writing letters; for drawing up legal texts of various kinds: legacies, declarations of births and citizenship, reports of trials and diplomata militaria.

Hollow-formed and widening at the shoulders to a high elliptical bezel set with a black and white banded glass intaglio imitating striped sardonyx, depicting a running boar in profile on a baseline; Greek letters KΠ on the surface under the boar; supplied with a museum-quality impression. 1.93 grams, 22.40 mm overall, 15.77 mm internal diameter (approximate size British J, USA 4 3/4, Europe 8.69, Japan 8)



Ex private collection, Contessa L.G., since the 1980s. Private collection, acquired in 1997.

The motif and style, a running boar with a tube-like body, seem to fit into Boardman's Wyndham Cook Group, and could be ascribed to the Graeco-Persian period, despite the fact that the gemstone was later incorporated into a Roman ring.

Plano-convex type with incuse design to the underside of a bird advancing on a baseline, head turned to the rear with a tendril in its beak; supplied with a museum-quality impression. 1.06 grams, 14 mm



From the private collection of a European gentleman (1942-2024), formed since the 1970s.