The Forsbrook Pendant is a piece of

Anglo Saxon The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to Ge ...

jewellery found in

Forsbrook Forsbrook is a village in Staffordshire, around three miles southwest of Cheadle and situated on the edge of the Staffordshire Moorlands. It is an old village and is mentioned in the Domesday Book, with the rather unflattering description as was ...

Staffordshire Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation ''Staffs''.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England. It borders Cheshire to the north-west, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, ...

, England and sold to the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

in 1879. It is a 7th-century setting of a 4th-century gold

Roman coin Roman currency for most of Roman history consisted of gold, silver, bronze Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, ...

in gold cellwork with

garnet Garnets () are a group of silicate minerals that have been used since the Bronze Age as gemstones and abrasives. Garnet minerals, while sharing similar physical and crystallographic properties, exhibit a wide range of chemical compositions, de ...

and

blue glass Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between violet and cyan on the spectrum of visible light. The term ''blue'' generally des ...

inlays.

Description and context

The

pendant A pendant is a loose-hanging piece of jewellery, generally attached by a small loop to a necklace, which may be known as a "pendant necklace". A pendant earring is an earring with a piece hanging down. Its name stems from the Latin word ...

, in diameter, comprises a 7th-century setting for a gold

solidus Solidus (Latin for "solid") may refer to: * Solidus (coin) The ''solidus'' (Latin 'solid'; : ''solidi'') or ''nomisma'' () was a highly pure gold coin issued in the Later Roman Empire and Byzantine Empire. It was introduced in the early ...

(coin) of

Valentinian II Valentinian II (; 37115 May 392) was a Roman emperor in the western part of the Roman Empire between AD 375 and 392. He was at first junior co-ruler of his half-brother, then was sidelined by a usurper, and finally became sole ruler after 388, ...

(375–392 AD), so that the coin was over 200 years old when the pendant was made. The coin, whose

obverse The obverse and reverse are the two flat faces of coins and some other two-sided objects, including paper money, flags, seals, medals, drawings, old master prints and other works of art, and printed fabrics. In this usage, ''obverse'' ...

is displayed, is surrounded by a circular frame containing

cloisonné Cloisonné () is an ancient technology, ancient technique for decorating metalwork objects with colored material held in place or separated by metal strips or wire, normally of gold. In recent centuries, vitreous enamel has been used, but inla ...

gold with

and

inlay, on a cross-hatched

gold foil upA gold nugget of 5 mm (0.2 in) in diameter (bottom) can be expanded through hammering into a gold foil of about 0.5 m2 (5.4 sq ft). The Japan.html" ;"title="Toi gold mine museum, Japan">Toi gold mine museum, Japan. Gold leaf is gold that has ...

background, with the inlay continuing round the suspension loop, where it terminates with two stylised animal heads meeting under the suspension loop. The side edge of the frame is decorated with three strands of gold wire, each end terminating with a serpent heads next to the suspension loop. The back of the pendant is plain, apart from the suspension loop. There are a number of similar Anglo-Saxon pendants setting Roman or Byzantine coins, which appear to have been mostly worn by women. The majority of Anglo-Saxon jewellery in the 6th-7th century made intensive use of flat, cut almandine garnets in gold and red garnet cloisonné (or cellwork) but occasionally glass was also cut and inset as gems, as in some of the pieces from

Sutton Hoo Sutton Hoo is the site of two Anglo-Saxon cemeteries dating from the 6th to 7th centuries near Woodbridge, Suffolk, England. Archaeology, Archaeologists have been excavating the area since 1938, when an undisturbed ship burial containing a wea ...

. The glass colours used were almost entirely limited to blue and green.Bimson, M and Freestone, I. C., "Analysis of some glass from Anglo-Saxon Jewellery", in Price, J. 2000. ''Glass in Britain and Ireland AD 350-1100'', British Museum Occasional paper 127, 137–142. A number of pieces in the

Staffordshire Hoard The Staffordshire Hoard is the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver metalwork . It consists of almost 4,600 items and metal fragments, amounting to a total of of gold, of silver and some 3,500 pieces of garnet cloisonné je ...

also mix blue glass with garnet inlays. The backing of patterned gold foil, which serves to increase the light reflected back through the thin garnet slices, is typical of cellwork jewellery and also found in these two deposits, which are the largest survivals of the type. Chemical analysis of such glass has revealed that they are a soda-lime-

silica Silicon dioxide, also known as silica, is an oxide of silicon with the chemical formula , commonly found in nature as quartz. In many parts of the world, silica is the major constituent of sand. Silica is one of the most complex and abundant f ...

glass but with a lower iron and

manganese Manganese is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Mn and atomic number 25. It is a hard, brittle, silvery metal, often found in minerals in combination with iron. Manganese was first isolated in the 1770s. It is a transition m ...

oxide content than the high iron, manganese and

titanium Titanium is a chemical element; it has symbol Ti and atomic number 22. Found in nature only as an oxide, it can be reduced to produce a lustrous transition metal with a silver color, low density, and high strength, resistant to corrosion in ...

glass used to make Anglo-Saxon vessels. The similarity between the composition of the glass inlays and Roman coloured glass is remarkable, so much so that it is likely that the Anglo-Saxon craftworkers were re-using Roman opaque glass, possibly Roman glass

tessera A tessera (plural: tesserae, diminutive ''tessella'') is an individual tile, usually formed in the shape of a square, used in creating a mosaic. It is also known as an abaciscus or abaculus. Historical tesserae In early antiquity, mo ...

e, rather than

Anglo-Saxon glass Anglo-Saxon glass has been found across England during archaeological excavations of both settlement and cemetery sites. Glass in the History of Anglo-Saxon England, Anglo-Saxon period was used in the manufacture of a range of objects including ve ...

Discovery and accession

The pendant was found by a labourer who was maintaining a hedge at Forsbrook in Staffordshire. A 'young lady' took it to Isaac Whitehurst of Swan Bank,

Congleton Congleton is a market town and civil parish in Cheshire East, Cheshire, England. It is on the River Dane, south of Manchester and north of Stoke on Trent. At the 2021 census, the parish had a population of 28,497 and the built-up area ha ...

, and he wrote offering it for sale, to the

, who accepted, and whose receipt, dated 28 June 1879, is for £15. The museum's accession number is . Stoke-on-Trent Museum and Art Gallery have a replica, commissioned in 1977, accession number K36.1977. Three similar pendants, with a gold coin solidus mounted in a garnet cloisonné setting, are held by the British Museum: a similar 7th-century pendant using an imitation of a gold solidus of the Byzantine emperor Maurice (582-602) found near

Bacton, Norfolk Bacton is a village and civil parish in Norfolk, England. It is on the Norfolk coast, some south-east of Cromer, north-west of Great Yarmouth and north of Norwich. Besides the village of Bacton, the parish includes the nearby settlements of ...

in 1845 (BM (P&E) 1846.6-20,1), the Wilton Cross from Wilton, Norfolk with a coin of the Byzantine emperors

Heraclius Constantine Heraclius Constantine (; ; 3 May 612 – 25 May 641), often enumerated as Constantine III, was one of the shortest reigning Byzantine emperors, ruling for three months in 641. He was the eldest son of Emperor Heraclius and his first wife Fabia ...

(613-630), and one with a coin of

Valens Valens (; ; 328 – 9 August 378) was Roman emperor from 364 to 378. Following a largely unremarkable military career, he was named co-emperor by his elder brother Valentinian I, who gave him the Byzantine Empire, eastern half of the Roman Em ...

(364-378). George Speake in 1970 suggested that the image of the emperor displayed on the obverse of the coin could be an object of veneration, and the setting could be a

zoomorphic The word ''zoomorphism'' derives from and . In the context of art, zoomorphism could describe art that imagines humans as non-human animals. It can also be defined as art that portrays one species of animal like another species of animal or art ...

imitation of a Roman laurel wreath. Speake, G. 1970
A Seventh-century Coin Pendant from Bacton
, ''Medieval Archaeology'' 14, 1–16

Notes

References

* Ozanne, A. 1962–3 The Peak Dwellers', ''Medieval Archaeology'' 6–7, 15–52 * Victoria County History, Staffordshire, Vol. I 1908 * Webster, Leslie, ''Anglo-Saxon Art'', 2012, British Museum Press, {{ISBN, 9780714128092 7th century in England Anglo-Saxon art Anglo-Saxon archaeology Archaeological sites in Staffordshire History of Staffordshire 1879 archaeological discoveries Coins of ancient Rome Individual pendants Medieval European objects in the British Museum Medieval European metalwork objects

Description and context

Discovery and accession

Further reading

Notes

References