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An Open-Work Bronze Disc in the Ashmolean Museum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

Cyril Fox
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Extract

The linear patterns on British mirrors and other bronzes show with what zest the Celtic craftsmen of the first centuries B.C. and A.D. copied and adapted the triquetral design in relief exemplified on the well-known bronze plaque from Llyn Cerrig Bach, Anglesey (fig. 1).

On the other hand, the evidence for the continued use and development of this attractive asymmetric motif in plastic art is but slight, and any additional example of fine metalwork thus decorated is welcome.

Such a specimen, an open-work disc in cast bronze, is here figured (pl. I). It is mentioned by our Fellow Mr. E. T. Leeds in his Celtic Ornament (p. 56), and this led the writer to ask our Fellow Mr. D. B. Harden, Keeper of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum, for facilities for its study, and thereafter for permission to publish, both requests being readily granted. The Museum number is N.C. 448. The disc appears, Mr. Harden tells me, in a catalogue of c. 1879–80, at which time, apparently, its origin and date of accession were unknown, as they were left blank in the catalogue.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 27 , Issue 1-2 , April 1947 , pp. 1 - 6
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1947

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References

page 1 note 1 Fox, Cyril, A Find of the Early Iron Age from Llyn Cerrig Bach, Anglesey, National Museum of Wales, 1946, pls. 1 and xiii and pp. 46–57Google Scholar; ‘A Shield Boss of the Early Iron Age from Anglesey’, Archaeologia Camirensis, 1945, pp. 199–220.

page 1 note 2 Mr. Leeds inadvertently described the disc as flat on the back, Celtic Ornament, p. 56.

page 2 note 1 See pp. 3–4, Arch. Camb. 1941.

page 2 note 2 The student interested in minutiae on which much of this branch of art history, as of others, depends, will observe that the numbers and letters do not include all the related features.

page 4 note 1 Cf. Dr. Paul Jacobsthal on Celtic workshop practice: Early Celtic Art, 157, § 4.

page 4 note 2 F. Henry, Prehistoire, ii, 96.

page 4 note 3 Archaeologia, xiv, pl. xx, 2.

page 5 note 1 Good line drawings, of front, back, and section by Charles Praetorius are in P.S.A., 1898, xvii, 166. I owe this reference to Leeds, Celtic Ornament, p. 56.

page 5 note 2 Leeds, Celtic Ornament, pl. 1.

page 5 note 3 Grimes, Guide to the Prehistoric Collections, N.M.W., p. 118, fig. 40, 9. This piece may throw light on the well-defined isolation of the free lobe (or leaf) in nodes 1′ and 2′ (see fig. 1).

page 5 note 4 Unpublished. Dr. Paul Jacobsthal directed my attention to it.

page 6 note 1 Derivation from the symmetrical ‘Sacred Tree’ motif of the East, occasionally met with in early continental Celtic art, seems improbable. See Jacobsthal, Early Celtic Art, Index, ‘Sacred Tree’; the closest parallel is perhaps that on a tore, no. 240, pl. 138.