BOOK FITTING

Lozengiform mount, perhaps from a book, made of gilded copper alloy and decorated with chip-carved interlace. In the centre is a hole, which has been pushed through from front to back through the centre of a circular cell which may once have held a setting. Outside the wall of this cell are four cells of interlace, each containing a simple knot of two loops. These are contained within a double-strand circular border and separated by a double-strand cross; the arms of the cross pass alternately under and over the circular border. They then extend to an outer double-strand border running all the way around the lozenge, which they also alternately lie under and over; the arms that passed under the circular border lie over the lozengiform border and vice versa. In the four outer cells thus formed is more interlace, not always identical in each cell but always fairly well made. The mount's layout is unsymmetrical; one edge of the outer border is longer than the others. There is a perforation in one corner, next to the broken remains of a second. The edges of the mount are oddly irregular beyond the double-strand border, as if it has been broken from a larger piece. The reverse is undecorated with no surviving gilding. The mount is in general surprisingly thick and heavy - 2 mm thick and weighing 21.14g - and this irregularity coupled with the well-made interlace and the apparently broken edges combines to suggest that it is not a book mount at all, but part of a larger composite item.