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Description: | Fragment of an ornamental panel from the lower end of a small triangular buckle plate. The gold foil sheet is torn and slightly crumpled and carries the remains of interlacing elements, probably stylised zoomorphs, in fine beaded wire between beaded wire borders. The triple banded design of the zoomorphs is executed typically using wire of two weights B a thicker central wire flanked on either side by thinner wire. The filigree wire is soldered to a thin gold sheet worked in repousse with the underlying pattern. Triangular buckles come into use in the last quarter of the 6th century, following Continental fashion, and have a wide currency throughout the first half of the 7th century. They are made in a variety of materials, the finer in silver, silver-gilt or gold, and are frequently inlaid with panels of sheet gold, decorated with sinuous filigree wire zoomorphic ornament (George Speake, Anglo-Saxon Animal Art and its Germanic Background (1980), plates 6-8). Stylistically, this tiny fragment from Kelvedon can be best compared to the filigree decorated sheet in a silver-gilt buckle from Faversham (Speake, plate 6c). Similar triple banded filigree is a feature of high status metalwork of the 7th century, including the gold sheet covering the copper-alloy cores of a pair of clasps from the 7th century burial at Taplow, Buckinghamshire (L Webster and J Backhouse (eds.), The Making of England, Anglo-Saxon Art and Culture, AD 600-900 (London, 1991), cat. no. 38). Dimensions and metal content: Length: 15mm; weight: 0.45g. X-ray fluorescence analysis at the British Museum indicated an approximate gold content of 68 per cent. | Subjects: | Plate Anglo-Saxon | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Identifier: | http://www.findsdatabase.org.uk/hms/pas_... | Language: | en-GB | Go to resource |
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