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Description: | Cast copper-alloy Anglo-Saxon button-type or small disc brooch. The brooch is circular, with a central circular garnet setting surrounded by a zone of Style I animal art, which is gilded. The outer edge of the brooch comprises a low, flattish, rim, about 1.6mm across. The upper surface of most of the rim is worn, but in a few places remains of a thin black inlay in a zig-zag pattern is visible. This is almost certainly niello. Part of a hinge and catchplate survive on the reverse, but no trace of the pin is present.
The Style I animal art comprises two complete 'quadrupeds' with leg tucked under the body and coiled 'tail' (or hip joint); their faces abut double vertical bars, to the right of which is a profile head, one of which seems to face clockwise, the other anti-clockwise.
This brooch has no direct parallel, but two flat, relief-decorated copper alloy brooches from Great Blakenham, Suffolk, with Style I decoration are similar. They are larger (30-40mm diameter) and lack the central garnet setting or zig-zag border inlay, but have two pairs of back-to-back animals set around a central plain flat discoid centre in an arrangement that has resonances with the Ickham brooch.
This brooch does not fall easily within any of the defined types of early Anglo-Saxon brooch. In size it is similar to button brooches, and might be related to the 'button-type' brooches with central circular garnet-setting, although it lacks the true upturned rim of a button or saucer brooch. Examples of button-type brooches without upturned rim are known however, and it is tempting to term the Ickham brooch a 'button-type'. On the other hand the Style I artwork and zig-zag border inlay is suggestive of an attempt to imitate Kentish garnet-inlaid disc brooches, and perhaps the term 'button-disc' brooch is to be preferred. If so, a date of manufacture in or soon after the 2nd quarter of the 6th century seems probable. | 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: | 525
560 | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Creator: | Andrew Richardson | Identifier: | http://www.finds.org.uk/database/artefac... | Language: | en-GB | Format: | text/html | Go to resource |
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