Introduction

In his introduction to Thrymsas and Sceattas, Michael Metcalf stated: ‘There are two kinds of book to be written about Anglo-Saxon coins of the seventh and eighth centuries, namely one to set out the arguments which establish where and when the coins were struck, and in what percentage, and another to describe how they circulated and to discuss the purpose for which they were used: one kind of book on numismatics, the other on monetary history.’ This work however will attempt a third way: it will be an art-historical appraisal of Anglo-Saxon coinage, from its inception in the late sixth century to Offa’s second reform of the penny c.792. Artistically, this is the most exciting period of English coinage, with die-cutters showing flair and innovation and employing hundreds of different designs in their work, yet coins, with the exception of the pioneering work of Baldwin Brown, are rarely included in surveys of Anglo-Saxon art. Coins have often provided illustrations to history books. However, in contrast to Metcalf’s contribution in the book edited by Campbell in 1982, where, albeit from a numismatic perspective, the charm and variety of the types were stressed, and several specimens illustrated, no coin made it onto the pages of Wilson’s Anglo-Saxon Art of 1984, but only the statement: ‘coins provide a fruitful area of stylistic analysis, but, with rare exceptions, show few distinctive or important ornamental traits’. That coins are mentioned, and three specimens illustrated in Laing and Laing 1996, is probably due to the 1991 British Museum exhibition, ‘The Making of England’, and the catalogue that accompanied it, which stressed the importance of the coinage as a historical document, but more fundamentally presented it as an integral part of the visual culture of the time. The same innovative approach was apparent in the 1997 ‘Heirs of Rome’ exhibition, where emphasis was placed on the iconography of the coinage as a bearer of meaning. These efforts have certainly contributed to a new awareness of the richness of the material. Although in recent years this early phase of Anglo-Saxon coinage has been the subject of extensive numismatic research, that much can be gained from comparing and contrasting coin iconography from an art-historical stance was demonstrated by Mary Morehart’s contributions to the numismatic debate.