|
Date: |
|
Description: | A copper alloy medieval harness pendant suspension hanger decorated with enamel and gilding. It is approximately square, but bent backwards at the top left corner. In the centre is a bird in profile walking to the left, with a suggestion of black enamel in the recesses forming the bird's body, but this might be a deposit. There is red enamel in the legs and beak. The bird is within a square panel, and around this is a wide border divided into panels. The centre of each side has a three-towered castle in the central panel. The castles are raised above the background which has areas of blue enamel. The panels at the corners are square and undecorated, each having a circular rivet hole; two holes are empty, another blocked by iron corrosion, and in a third the head of an iron rivet survives reasonably well. All the raised or reserved areas were gilded, including the castles.Below the square, two loops project with a gap between, into which the loop of the pendant would have slotted. The two loops are blocked with the remains of the iron hinge bar which would have held the pendant in place. The object has a green patina.It measures 37.22mm long including the loops x 28.81mm wide x 2.06mm thick. The loops measure 10.81mm long x 13.15mm wide, including the gap, x 6.96mm thick, It weighs 15.34g.The mount may be heraldic. If the bird were a raven, sable, beaked and membered gules, it could belong to the Corbett family. A Thomas Corbett had two ravens for his arms in Glover's Roll of c.1255 (C. R. Humphery-Smith, Anglo-Norman Armory Two, p.200). If the bird was not black it is likely to have been blue, to match the background of the border.Alternatively, the mount is perhaps more likely to be pseudo-heraldic. There are several examples of similar rectangular suspension mounts and pendants with a bird on the PAS database which also do not seem to be strictly heraldic. Pendants IOW-7F131F and YORYM-A30C87, and suspension mounts LEIC-AC0440 and WILT-5B90E7 are all similar, with a cross-hatched background, and probably predate this example, but the bird on WILT-5B90E7 is membered gules, as is a profile bird on another rectangular pendant, LEIC-9F8A36, which is similar to an example in the London Museum Medieval Catalogue (Ward-Perkins 1940,120 and plate XXI, ref. A1362). None of these have a border like the present record, but borders were coming into use in heraldry as in the arms of Richard of Cornwall (a lion rampant in a bordure bezanty).The gold castles suggest Castile and may be a reference to Eleanor of Castile, who married into the English royal family in 1254. A pendant suspension mount can be seen on the PAS database with a single towered castle, IHS-0D2BA1.This style of mount fits quite happily into the 13th or early 14th century, c.1200-1350.
Original Image | Publisher: | http://finds.org.uk | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Identifier: | https://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/ | Go to resource |
|
|