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Description: | An unusual harness fitting, incomplete due to old breaks. It consists of a roughly biconical sphere, measuring 33.6mm in diameter and 21.4mm in thickness. This sphere has a vertical central circular perforation through it, measuring 7.2mm in diameter. The perforation is slightly damaged due to corrosion, and has old breaks on the underside. Originally an upright stem would have passed through the central perforation, allowing the sphere itself to freely rotate around the stem. Projecting from the top face of the sphere there are four arms, made separately and attached through perforations in the sphere. Due to the spacing of the arms and the presence of two further worn perforations it seems that there were originally six evenly spaced arms, two of which are now missing. Each of the surviving arms is rectangular in shape, and measures 23mm in length and 3.5mm in width. The arms all end with a split terminal with a horizontal copper-alloy rivet through it. Hanging from two of the terminals there are small copper-alloy pendants; similar pendants would have hung from all of the arms originally, but the others are now missing. The suspension loops of these pendants are set at right angles to the plane of the pendant, as with larger medieval horse-harness pendants, and they are suspended from the horizontal rivets through the terminals of the arms of the sphere. Each of the pendants is rectangular, measuring 11.8mm by 10.8mm. They have rounded corners and a central raised lozenge-shaped design with a recessed quatrefoil in its centre. The sphere, its arms and the two remaining pendants are gilded; less gilding survives on the underside of the sphere than elsewhere.
Similar ornate harness fittings have been found in England. One is in Salisbury Museum (Cherry 1991, no. 7) and two more are in the British Museum (Ward Perkins 1949, figs. 2 and 3). All three have four arms, rather than the six this example originally had. A six-armed example is known from Termoli Cathedral in Italy, where it was converted into a reliquary; the Termoli example is much bigger, and each arm carries two tiny shield-shaped pendants. It is thought to be of French manufacture (Ward Perkins 1949). In addition, a very similar small rectangular pendant with lozenge and quatrefoil decoration was found in Ketteringham in Norfolk and published by Ashley (2002, no. 246) and detached arms may also occasionally be found (e.g. Griffiths 1986, no. 26). These spherical fittings were thought by Ward Perkins to have been fixed to wooden saddles, possibly decorating the draught-saddles of horses pulling the 'great carriages' in which noble ladies customarily travelled. They are medieval, and probably 14th century in date. | Format: | text/html | License: | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ | Publisher: | The Portable Antiquities Scheme | Rights holder: | The Portable Antiquities Scheme | Subjects: | archaeology | Temporal: | 1300
1400 | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Identifier: | http://www.finds.org.uk/database/artefac... | Language: | en-GB | Format: | text/html | Go to resource |
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