PENDANT

Description

An early Anglo-Saxon gold pendant set with a garnet, now very crumpled. The pendant is a circular disc, 0.4mm thick, with repoussé decoration made by hammering the metal over a patrix die. The design thus created consists of four simple faces, each made from a C-shape forming the brow, curved around a pair of eyes and with a straight nose running between the eyes and joined to the brow above. The faces together form a quatrefoil, and there is a dotted border set all around which is indistinct on the front but more obvious on the reverse - it has not been transferred effectively from the die. Each of the faces projects diagonally from the angle of a cross formed from four slim U-shapes which make an interlaced knot in the centre.

Around the quatrefoil is a circular outer border of dots, again much more distinct on the reverse. Over the top of this has been soldered a setting for a small curved flat-cut garnet with squared ends measuring 9.4mm long and 3.1mm wide. There is no evidence for any foil behind the garnet. The vertical walls of the setting have become loose at one end, and the seam (in the centre of the top) has not been finished off neatly. Above this area, on the reverse, is a 4mm long and very narrow transverse scar from a soldered-on suspension loop; how the front of the loop was fixed on, if at all, is not clear.

There is a well-made border of beaded wire a maximum of 0.9mm in diameter soldered to the edge, which has a narrow (less than 2mm) gap between the ends at the top. The wire has several abrasions and scrapes but these appear to have been made after the damage to the pendant had occurred, and there is are only two areas of obvious slight wear, to either side of the missing suspension loop.

Dimensions

The pendant in its crumpled state measures 19.4mm wide. Its original diameter was perhaps 23mm. It is 1.3mm thick and weighs 2.11g.

Discussion

This pendant is made using the bracteate technique, but with decoration of a central knot and four faces, and set with a garnet, it is transitional between the D-bracteates of the late 6th and early 7th centuries (with single animal decoration) and the pendants of the 7th century which have shed the imagery in favour of geometric decoration and garnets. It can be compared to a pendant from Ash in Kent, now in the British Museum which again has the knot and four (more complex) faces, but the knot this time is set diagonally and the four faces form the cross (accession no. P&E 1862, 7-1, 16; Webster and Backhouse 1991, no. 8). The cruciform arrangement may well have a Christian significance.

Date

A date in the late 6th or early 7th century (c. 580 to c. 650 AD) would be appropriate.