BROOCH 155450

Description: Incomplete Medieval annular brooch of copper alloy. It is 23mm in diameter, 3mm thick and weighs 2.76g (incomplete). There is a recess for a pin 2mm wide, although the pin is missing. It is covered in a black patina, some of which is removed. There is a small damaged area around 1mm in diameter which is probably recent as no patina exists. The frame to one half of the pin is decorated with a cable pattern; the frame is square is cross section and twisted and long each edge is a row of small punched dots. The other half of the frame appears to be undecorated. It also is square in cross section, although more rounded than the cable section. The decoration of the frame of object 1310 in Egan and Pritchard (1991) is also split into two sections, one either side of the pin. Like this brooch, 1310 has cabelling decoration although this is combined with transverse grooves and punched triangles on the other section, and the two sections are not of equal size. 1310 was recovered from contexts dating to c.1230-c.1260. No other example of combining two sorts of decoration in this way has been found. However, the two other brooches with cable decoration in Egan and Pritchard (1991), objects 1325 and 1331, date from c.1270-c.1350 and c.1350-1400 resepectively. Thus a date of between the 13th and early 15th century is suggested.

Date: 1200 - 1550

Object type: BROOCH

Last import: August 15, 2017