286 (34)

258

Dress Accessońes

166 Pentagonal, hexagonal and six-lobed brooches -odginał shapes restored below (1:1)

extemally at the apexes of the arcs, with traces of a thinner band around the edge; bar for missing pin spans one arc.

1349 BWB83 5803 (298) 11 A łess-complete example identical in design to the preceding brooch (possibly from the same mould); pewter (AML); pin missing.

A somewhat morę complete example (also lacking the pin) was found in spoił dumped from the Billings-gate site (private collection). The possibility that the false collets in the preceding five brooches were painted to simulate Stones has not found any support from the results of analysis.

Large, highly decorative brooch

Pewter

1350 SWA81 acc. no. 442 (context 2018) ceramic phase 9 fig 167

Fragment from an omate circular brooch; pewter (AML); cross-hatched boss with part of cable-decorated curving band attached.

The complete frame of what appears to be a similar, circular brooch, 85mm in diameter, was found in spoił dumped from the Billingsgate site (private collection -the brooch was stolen in 1987, and has not been recovered at the time of writing); it has a cross-hatched inner ring with altemate square and circular motifs and a cabled inner border, surrounded by a ring of eight sexfoils altemating with rayed bosses, surrounded by eight dotted bosses altemating with fleurs de lis, and with a cabled band running outside the bosses and inside the fleurs. Though the decoration on the bosses differs in de taił, the broad similarity in design suggests that the fragment is an outer element from a brooch of closely comparable design.

The large size of this brooch is comparable with that of one depicted on the tomb effigy of a 14th-century Danish Queen (fig 167) and on a 12th-century statuę of the Queen of Sheba at Chartres in France (Evans 1952, pl 7a), but there is seemingly no ready secular parallel in this country. Cf the morses (clasps) on medieval ecclesiastical copes (eg Clayton 1979, pl 56 no. 6). The size is impressive, and the existence in base metal of at least two variants implies a popular market. See also no. 1374.

Large brooches remarkably similar in overall form and in the combination of diverse decorative motifs were wom by peasant women in parts of Norway up to the last century (Noss 1985A, 26-29, 36-39, 55, 71 & 80, and idem 1985B, 3-5 & 7; cf Gerlach 1971, 36-37 pl 18. The designs were very regionalised in the rufal