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Description: | An incomplete copper-alloy Medieval horse harness pendant of approximately 13th to 14th centurary AD. This pendant is quartre-foil in shape and weighs 7.76g in its current incomplete state. The width of the pendant is 30.0mm with a thickness of 2.4mm and height of 28.8mm which increases to 36.7mm when including the height of the incomplete attachment loop.The body of the pendant has a rectangular cross-section. The back of the pendant is flat and undecorated, although now slightly uneven due to corrosion. The front is decorated with a square pannel filling the centre of the pendant body. This square seems to have been defined with a line border 0.8mm wide. Within this field is a four legged animal with one of the fore legs raised forwards, maybe a lion, passant left with a tail recurving over the animal's back. The field surrounding the animal and within the square border is lower than the rest of the upper surface creating the effect that the animal stands proud of the surface which immedieately surrounds it. This depressed field shows traces of a red substance, probably the remains of red enamel. The four semi-circular lobes that surround the central square pannel were possibly plain and covered in red enamel some of which still survives. The current appearance is that the patchy surviving enamel on these lobes is just the result of some of the enamel no longer surviving. The lobe extending out from the side nearest to the animal's hind legs and tail possibly hints at this field having a fleur de lis filling the centre of the lobe and the red enamel only being present on the field that surrounds this fleur. The identification of the presence of a fleur de lis is complicated by poor and incomplete survival of the enamel on the lobe. If there was originally a fleur motif filling this right hand lobe there would be the expectation that the other three lobes were also originally decorated in the same way with matching motifs. The lobe extending out from the side nearest to the animal's fore legs and head might support this suggestion although very unclear. The use of a fleur de lis on a semi-circular field would be a useful way of filling these spaces with decoration. If single fleur de lis were present on these lobes it is not possible to determine whether they were left plain allowing the copper-alloy to show through the enamel or decorated with a surface treatment, such as use of enamel of a different colour or gilt.An attachment loop, now incomplete with a worn break, extends upwards from the top of the centre of the upper semi-circular lobe. When viewed from the front, the base of the attachment loop is triangular with a width of 4.0mm where it joins the body of the pendant. This tapers away from the pendant body to a width of 1.4mm. When viewed from the side the attachment has a width of 3.6mm (this is the thickness/depth measurement when veiwed from the front of the artefact), where it joins the body of the pendant, and increases to 5.5mm across the attachment perforation. The attachment loop has broken across the perforation, which seems to probably have been cirular or oval, with the rear arm of the loop suriving 2.8mm higher than the front. The arms of the loop seem to have had a thickness of approximately 1.7mm. The perforation to form the attachment loop is positioned at 90 degrees to the front and back of the pendant. The loop expands both forwards and backwards resulting in the plane of the pendant body being below the centre of the loop.
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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