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Date: |
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Description: | Stirrup-strap mount, now in two halves found 5 months apart but apparently in the same place. Made of copper alloy, it is basically triangular with outcurving sides; it has openwork decoration and is partly gilded. The two halves both have old breaks and have corroded to slightly different colours. In places around the edge (top right and bottom left as you look at it, plus a short length along the base) a silver (mineralised niello?) border survives, decorated with a delicately engraved vertically repeated S-shaped line, probably originally inlaid silver wire. A border of this kind is also found on Williams nos. 70-1 (Class A, Type 3 mounts). Within the border, the openwork relief decoration is difficult to decipher. Nearly symmetrical, it has affinities with stirrup-strap mounts of Williams's Class A, Types 2 and 7, and also perhaps with Type 10; the decoration is based on one or two Urnes-style animals which coil and interlace with a large loop in each bottom corner. The problems are compounded by what appears to be an ancient repair - a copper-alloy rivet on each half, each holding part of a broken and bent copper-alloy strip. There may be another two rivets (of slightly more orangey metal) towards the right-hand side (as you look at it) but these are both on the upper half and could only help to mend the break if they both held a strip which was also fixed through the hole in the lower corner. There appears to be an animal head at the apex, with a rivet hole below. There are two further rivet holes at the base, one in each corner, but there is no flange (cf. Williams nos. 120, 196). This was originally an exceptionally fine mount. Weight of the upper half, 8.79g; total weight, 17.84g. Total length and width, c. 55 x c. 32 mm.
Original Image | Publisher: | http://finds.org.uk | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Identifier: | http://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/r... | Go to resource |
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