The Fuller Brooch is an

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo-Saxons happened wit ...

silver and

niello Niello is a black mixture, usually of sulphur, copper, silver, and lead, used as an inlay on engraved or etched metal, especially silver. It is added as a powder or paste, then fired until it melts or at least softens, and flows or is pushed ...

brooch A brooch (, also ) is a decorative jewelry item designed to be attached to garments, often to fasten them together. It is usually made of metal, often silver or gold or some other material. Brooches are frequently decorated with enamel or with g ...

dated to the late 9th century, which is now in the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

, where it is normally on display in Room 41. The elegance of the engraved decoration depicting the Five Senses, highlighted by being filled with

, makes it one of the most highly regarded pieces of

Anglo-Saxon art Anglo-Saxon art covers art produced within the Anglo-Saxon period of English history, beginning with the Migration period style that the Anglo-Saxons brought with them from the continent in the 5th century, and ending in 1066 with the Norman ...

Description

The brooch is a large disc made of hammered sheet

silver Silver is a chemical element with the symbol Ag (from the Latin ', derived from the Proto-Indo-European ''h₂erǵ'': "shiny" or "white") and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical ...

inlaid with black

and with a diameter of . Its centre roundel is decorated with personifications of the

five senses A sense is a biological system used by an organism for sensation, the process of gathering information about the world through the detection of stimuli. (For example, in the human body, the brain which is part of the central nervous system rec ...

. In the centre is Sight with large staring oval

eyes Eyes are organs of the visual system. They provide living organisms with vision, the ability to receive and process visual detail, as well as enabling several photo response functions that are independent of vision. Eyes detect light and con ...

, surrounded by the other four senses, each in his own compartment.

Taste The gustatory system or sense of taste is the sensory system that is partially responsible for the perception of taste (flavor). Taste is the perception produced or stimulated when a substance in the mouth reacts chemically with taste receptor ...

has a hand in his mouth. Smell's hands are behind his back, and he stands between two tall plants.

Touch In physiology, the somatosensory system is the network of neural structures in the brain and body that produce the perception of touch ( haptic perception), as well as temperature ( thermoception), body position (proprioception), and pain. It ...

rubs his hands together.

Hearing Hearing, or auditory perception, is the ability to perceive sounds through an organ, such as an ear, by detecting vibrations as periodic changes in the pressure of a surrounding medium. The academic field concerned with hearing is audit ...

holds his hand to his ear. This is the earliest known representation of the five senses. The outer border consists of 16 small medallions decorated with human, bird, animal and plant motifs.

Style and materials

Stylistically it is "in a very late version of the

Trewhiddle style Trewhiddle style is a distinctive style in Anglo-Saxon art that takes its name from the Trewhiddle Hoard, discovered in Trewhiddle, Cornwall in 1770. Trewhiddle ornamentation includes the use of silver, niello inlay, and zoomorphic, plant and ge ...

". After the discovery of the Strickland Brooch, one of the closest parallels to the Fuller Brooch, also 9th century and in the British Museum, additional research determined that the niello used in the Fuller Brooch was mainly

silver sulphide Silver sulfide is an inorganic compound with the formula . A dense black solid, it is the only sulfide of silver. It is useful as a photosensitizer in photography. It constitutes the tarnish that forms over time on silverware and other silver obje ...

, a type that went out of use later in the

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

period, in itself an argument against it being a modern forgery.

History of ownership

The brooch has survived in excellent condition, although the pin and its attachments have been removed, and the top of the brooch has been perforated for suspension, and it may be the only surviving piece of secular Anglo-Saxon metalwork to remain unburied since its creation. It was thought to be a

fake Fake may refer to: * Deception, an act or a statement intended to deceive ** Charlatan, a person who practices deception to obtain money or other advantages ** Counterfeit, a reproduction of an item, intended to deceive ** Cover-up, an attempt to ...

by Sir

Charles Hercules Read Sir Charles Hercules Read (6 July 1857 – 11 February 1929) was a British archaeologist and curator who became Keeper of British and Mediaeval Antiquities and Ethnography at the British Museum, and President of the Society of Antiquaries of L ...

, Keeper of British and Medieval Antiquities of the British Museum, because of its excellent condition. He advised the

Ashmolean Museum The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology () on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is Britain's first public museum. Its first building was erected in 1678–1683 to house the cabinet of curiosities that Elias Ashmole gave to the University o ...

in Oxford which had been lent the brooch, to take it off display. It was then bought by Captain A. W. F. Fuller for the price of the silver. In 1952 Capt. Fuller donated the brooch to the British Museum on the condition that it henceforth be called the Fuller Brooch.British Museum Collection
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References

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External links

The Fuller Brooch
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The British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docume ...

Anglo-Saxon art Individual brooches Medieval European metalwork objects Medieval European objects in the British Museum Silver objects Archaeological artifacts 9th-century artifacts