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Description: | Small gilt bronze plaque with enamel or niello inlay, mostly lost, and with light castings of metal 'walls' visible for the containment of champleve enamel fields. The object is approximately square, 15mm by 14mm, and encloses the figure of a crouching animal, quadruped, in profile with hind and foreleg shown. The head is turned back, with gaping jaws and rising ear, and with a prominent eye. The tail passes below and behind the rear thigh to emerge between the legs, and rises upwards across the body and ends above it in a feathered terminal. The field around this image is deep-cut as if chip-carved, and is gilded. The whole surface of the animal, including the tail and the legs with their shaped feet, were formerly enameled, but this survives now only in a blackened section around the snout. The style of the object seems likely to be from the late eighth to tenth centuries, but with a possible extension into the post-conquest period. The function is uncertain, but this is probably a single element from a composite decorative object with many empanelled details. The upper part of the plaque is slightly curved, bellying outwards, indicating that it was attached to a larger rounded form such as a vessel or ornamental rod.
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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