UNIDENTIFIED OBJECT

Description: Early Anglo-Saxon gold and garnet cloisonné panel, perhaps from a larger composite object. The panel is trapezoidal, and has a foundation of a thin gold backplate with thin vertical strips, probably soldered on, forming the walls. The ends of the strip overlap in the centre of the narrower end, and here are bent a little over the cloisonné panels, which may have helped to hold the entire object together; in other places the side strips have sprung away from the cloisonné panels. The backplate is a little longer at the narrower end and is bent up, partly covering the overlap. Some damage to the edges of the object allows the construction to be reasonably clearly seen.

A trapezoidal panel of high-quality cloisonné work has been made separately and fixed within the backplate and the vertical edges. The base of this separate panel can be seen where part of the edge strip has been broken away. Nine of the original fourteen garnets survive, one now cracked and another sunk down in its cell. The cloisonné is divided by a central wall that separates the wider end of the trapezium from the narrower. In the wider half is an arrow shape and two half-arrow shapes combined into a single concave-sided triangle with flat base, with a stepped cell in each corner linked to the triangle by a short oblique length of wall. The narrower part, slightly smaller, has a single central arrow shape with a half-mushroom to either side above and a stepped cell in each of the lower corners. Foils can be seen under all of the surviving garnets, apparently stamped with the same pattern of a grid of small raised squares.

A separate rectangular cloisonné panel is set within the backplate at the wider end, parallel to the edge of the trapezoidal panel. This is set with four small rectangular garnets, three of which survive, all again with similar foils beneath them. This transverse panel is not quite in the same plane as the trapezoidal panel, but is set slightly sloping downwards. Both of the cloisonné panels are made from thicker and more substantial gold; a thinner sheet covers the narrow gap between the two panels and is in effect a long narrow lidded cell in its own right.

Dimensions: length excluding the sprung-away edge strip, 19.8mm; total length, 21.3mm. Width at wider end, 14.9mm; width at narrower end, 7.3mm; 2.8mm thick. It weighs 2.89g in its uncleaned state.

Discussion: This object appears to be complete in its own right, but its function is still unclear. Much cloisonné jewellery was composite, with inserted panels which could in turn be made up from separate components, as here. Examples include much of the cloisonné work from Sutton Hoo Mound 1, notably the purse lid, which included several unusually shaped cloisonné plaques.

Arrow-shaped cells are found within several pieces of cloisonné from Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo, such as the curved mount (the 'dummy buckle', Inv. 10) and the purse lid, and on the Wilton cross, which contains a coin of Heraclius minted 613-630; but on these they appear to have been more space-fillers around mushroom-shaped and stepped cells than motifs in their own right. Clearer examples of arrow-shaped cells, but with truncated tops, can be found on the Holderness cross (YORYM214) and on SWYOR-73AF38, another enigmatic small object, which may be part of a buckle pin. Rows of small rectangular garnets are found several times on the Sutton Hoo purse-lid.

Date: Gold and garnet cloisonné work is characteristic of the early and mid seventh century AD, from c. 600 AD well into the second half of the century.