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Description: | The right-hand (sinister) lobe and part of the empanelled ornamental footplate of a gilt bronze square-headed brooch of sixth century date and East Anglian manufacture, of Hines' Class XVI. The fragment is but 21mm wide, 18mm high and 2.2mm thick, but the surviving detail is sufficient for a confident attribution to that group. The outer edges of the lobe are abraded, but it was evidently raised and coated with silver sheet which is now lost from the metal surface, except for one tiny spot near the lower edge. The empanelled ornament includes the ends of two panels of guilloche which follow the outline of the brooch frame upon this arm of the footplate. Two important stylistic features are noticeable: A small detail attached to the upper side of the lobe outside the frame is probably not one of the small circular loops often attached to the edges of these brooches (eg Lakenheath, Hines Pl 54b, or Spong Hill, ibid Pl 55a), but is part of the tip of the jaw of a gaping everted beast-head from the upper shoulder of the footplate. The area within the gaping jaws was pierced openwork. So also in the V between the two diverging bars of guilloche, one can see that the triangular space within the arm of the brooch was also pierced. These two features are paralleled for instance on the Westgarth Gardens, Bury St Edmunds, brooch of Group XVI, Hines Pl 57b. However the findspot of this fragment, together with other square-headed brooches, just north of Ipswich recalls the presence in the Hadleigh Road cemetery excavated by Layard in 1906-7 of several brooches of Group XVI which appear to be by the same maker as the Westgarth Gardens brooch. Hence the geographical/topographical relationship between this find and the Handford examples stimulates particular interest.
Among an earlier group of square-headed brooch fragments recorded from the same site as the present example (SF-0C2447) is a large circular lobe from the base of a copper alloy square headed brooch also of Group XVI. It is quite likely, though not certain, that that basal lobe and this side lobe are in fact parts of the same brooch. | 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: | 540
580 | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Identifier: | http://www.finds.org.uk/database/artefac... | Language: | en-GB | Format: | text/html | Go to resource |
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