EARLY MEDIEVAL JEWELLERY FITTING

Enamelled roundel, with a gold backplate and a gold outer wall which is very perfectly and neatly soldered on, but at one point now torn and distorted. Extremely slender internal cell walls of gold pick out a human figure from the waist up, holding out the left arm and with a further curving wall perhaps depicting the right arm. Both cells of the figure, head/body/left arm and right arm, are filled with dark green enamel, and there is white opaque enamel outside.This roundel is about the right size to come from a finger-ring, and circular roundels of similar size are known from tenth-century gold finger-rings such as PAS-D681D8, LON-3478C7, and two noted in Treasure Annual Reports but not yet on the PAS database (TAR2003, no.110; 2003T 24 and TAR2001, no. 46; 2001T11). All of these depict a four-petalled flower, but different designs are found in base metals on LVPL500 (a four-cell pattern with alternating red T-cells and blue mushroom cells) and LON-A2FD02 (a rectangular field with two petal shapes). See DENO-5BCF87, however, for the four-petal enamelling on a copper-alloy ring.Another detached roundel of similar size, but with a design of the Hand of God, was reported as Treasure in 2006 (T242; TAR 2005/6, no. 286), and interpreted as a setting from a larger religious object such as an altar cross, book cover or reliquary. The opaque white and dark green enamels of ESS-9E6D71are easily paralleled among these finds, but the particular motif, with a hand raised in blessing, does not appear to have been noted before.These enamel settings are well known from Continental workshops, but the number now known from the 9th to 11th centuries in England (including very high quality work such as the Alfred Jewel) shows that they are also likely to have been made here.1.25g, 9.84mm diameter.