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Description: | A worn and broken copper-alloy sleeve which would have probably been mounted on a medieval scabbard. The object is of bent sheet construction and rectangular in form; a rectangle having originally been bent round on itself into two pairs of long and short faces respectively. The visible faces are all decorated with incised designs. The most intricately decorated (large) face features a zoomorphic motif: a beast in a crouching position. The pose appears rather uncomfortable; the animal seems to be contorted to fit within the rectangular border that bounds it. The animal is facing right with head looking ahead and slightly upwards. The animal's hind is its highest point; the visible hind leg is flush to the vertical border. The long visible fore limb is flat to the border with the front of the body and neck above. The whole is well rendered, with discernible mouth, eye, tail and possible cloven hooves. The rest of the field within the border is 'shaded' with incised longitudinal lines. The other large face also has a rectangular border, but a relatively plain device: a diagonal stripe travelling bottom-left to top-right infilled with longitudinal linear incisions, either side of which a 'V' and inverted 'V' respectively formed of two incised lines which do not join. Both small side panels feature chevrons formed of three lines. The object has been distorted and is no longer joined at its original seam. It has cracked on the more plain larger face on the verticals of the border which were evidently deeply incised. Between the border and the seam there has also been a loss. Although the object now has a dusty mid-light green patina it is supposed that in its original state it would have adorned a scabbard. An early 14th-century scabbard mount can be found illustrated in Ward Perkins (1940, facing 29; Plate V), although the example has suspension loops. A date in the 13th century for this artefact is suggested based on the style of the animal by analogy to contemporary buckle plates (ex. Egan and Pritchard 1991, 113; ref. 530). See Cowgill et al. (1987, 116ff.) for leather scabbards which tend to be bifacially decorated, often with one face more intricately decorated than the other. | 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: | 1200
1300 | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Creator: | Robert Webley | Identifier: | http://www.finds.org.uk/database/artefac... | Language: | en-GB | Format: | text/html | Go to resource |
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