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Description: | An intaglio brooch. The semi-precious stone intaglio is set into a cast copper alloy brooch. The reverse of the brooch is silvered. The brooch is oval, with an outer raised plain border and an inner raised border creating a setting for the intaglio. There are fainted traces of indented decoration running around inside the outer border and outside the inner. The reverse of the brooch has a curled catch-plate at the upper end and a spring plate at the lower end, with the remains of the iron spring and the stump of the pin. The reverse has a well-preserved layer of silver leaf, although there are patches of corrosion from the copper alloy beneath. Where there is no corrosion, the silver is pristine (maybe 30% of the reverse), with the marks of its original beating still visible as faint parallel lines. It is likely that the obverse was originally silvered also. The intaglio has a dark orangey brown colour, and is incomplete. The upper left portion survives, and shows a head looking left, with a hand coming towards the mouth, as if calling. There are shoulders, and possible drapery below the arm. To the right of the head there is something- perhaps a chair-back or another arm. Everything else has been lost, as the intaglio has been shattered at some point- perhaps when someone in the past was trying to remove it for the purposes of 'recycling'. The bottom and bottom right edges are lost entirely, and the rest has flaked to reveal the shiny, glass-like flake scars.The copper alloy on the obverse and reverse is green and pitted, and the raised borders are eroded in places. The whole piece has been coated in lacquer in an attempt to preserve it, but a kink in the broken intaglio suggests that the corrosion may be advanced within; certainly the lacquer coating life span of this beautiful object has been reduced now to a few years, given the advanced nature of the corrosion. This artefact dates to the Roman period.
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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