EARLY MEDIEVAL STRAP END

900

Incomplete strap-end, missing its terminal. The front, back and sides are cast in one piece and the strap-end is hollow. The complete end is presumably the attachment end, as it is open and cut straight across, but there is no visible means of attachment. The other end is squashed and broken off (old break). Both front and back have identical openwork decoration with engraved detail, and the sides both have irregularly spaced transverse grooves. The decoration on front and back is complicated. Held with the attachment end uppermost, at the top is a pair of back-to-back birds with a rosette in between. The birds each have a long folded wing angled backwards, rounded at the top and pointed at the bottom; another outstretched wing may be represented above this one. The birds are sitting in a tree with a central trunk and two lower branches, which run around the back of a large quadruped seen in profile. This animal must be a lion; it has a head with grooved eyebrow and round eye, two feet with toes, hints of a mane, two nicks on the back just before the tail, and the tail bent up and back so that it is held in the open mouth of the backwards-looking head. Below the lion are the roots of the tree. Much of the surface, together with much of the engraved detail is now largely corroded away.Gabor Thomas has seen a drawing and scan, and comments: "The technique and motifs represented, especially the paired birds, belong to the canon of Winchester-style art of the 10th to 11th century. The central animal is a bit more unusual and may signal Romanesque influence. A parallel which may be of similar date comes from Hindolveston, Norfolk (which is in Norwich Castle Museum). In this instance, it appears that the zoomorphic symbols may relate to signs of the zodiac (as found on Romanesque art)." Presumably the sign of the zodiac represented here is Leo.This artefact has been published in Kershaw (2008, 257-258; Fig. 2) and Naylor ed. (2013, 276-277; Fig. 8e).