Details

LOT 1042

Viking Hiberno-Norse Gilt-Bronze Mount with Addorsed Birds

8TH-9TH CENTURY AD

3/4" (6.14 grams, 22 mm).

A gilt harness mount with narrow neck and broader finial; the neck with a regular chip-carved Insular Style interlace; the finial formed as a pair of addorsed birds to be viewed reversed as two conjoined zoomorphic masks, each with an ear at the junction of the neck; median piercing above the lower edge; pierced lug to the reverse.

Provenance

Ex Bonham's, London, New Bond Street, 20 October 2005, Auction 11598, lot 298; found in Lincolnshire, UK, in 2002.

Literature

Published in Hammond, B.M. British Artefacts vol.2 - Middle Saxon and Viking, Witham, 2010; cf. similar examples in Youngs, S. The Work of Angels Masterpieces of Celtic Metalwork, 6th-9th Centuries AD, page 119 nos. 1171 a & b.

CONDITION