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Description: | Description: Disc pendant made from a plain polished sheet of gold with a border of well-made beaded wire (diameter 0.8mm). At the top, this border is interrupted by a separate cylindrical suspension loop 4.6mm wide, made from gold sheet decorated with six grooves. This is cut into a long point on the reverse, where it is soldered on; the grooves respect the tapered shape, indicating that they were made after the strip had been cut to shape. The reverse is not otherwise decorated, but has some scratches.On the front there is a central motif of a cross with tapering rounded ends and a central circular boss. The boss appears to be made from a low dark reddish glass cabochon set at the top with a lighter, taller translucent green glass blob, now partly missing. The darker glass is surrounded by an upright gold strip collar. Further gold strips run around each cross arm. Each arm is made from two pinkish garnets divided by very slim cell walls. The walls are now somewhat crushed and the garnets cracked and broken, although little appears to be actually missing. No foils are visible under the garnets, and even allowing for the crushing, the cloisonné seems always to have been of rather poor quality. The entire cross is surrounded by an outer collar of well-made beaded wire 0.5mm in diameter.Dimensions: Diameter 29.57 mm, length including suspension loop 31.64 mm, maximum thickness 5.31 mm, weight 5.09 g.Discussion: This pendant fits into a well-known series of filigree-decorated and often gem-set gold disc pendants. Many of these have designs based on a cross, with famous examples coming from Wigber Low in Derbyshire, Harford Farm 18 in Norfolk, three from Boss Hall 93 in Suffolk, Uncleby 31 in East Yorkshire, and graves 84, 95 and 179 at Lechlade in Gloucestershire (Collis 1983; Penn 2000; Scull 2009; Meaney 1964, 320; Boyle et al 1998. For Boss Hall, also see Webster and Backhouse (eds) 1991, no. 33b). Examples recorded by the PAS include ESS-450B96, SF-B6EFA1 and NMS-515C15.These pendants are all extremely diverse (Scull 2009, 100) but 2013T371 is notable for its use of polychrome glass, and for the poor quality of its cloisonné.Date: All of these filigree-decorated gold disc pendants appear to date to the second half of the 7th century AD (Geake 1997, 38).
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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