The Strickland Brooch is an

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, 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 t ...

silver and niello disc brooch dated to the mid 9th century, now in 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 ...

. Although its exact provenance is unknown, it is regarded by scholars as a rare and important example of an

Anglo-Saxon brooch Anglo-Saxon brooches are a large group of decorative brooches found in England from the fifth to the eleventh centuries. In the early Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Saxon era, there were two main categories of brooch: the long (bow) brooch and the circular ...

Description

The Strickland Brooch is similar in appearance to the Fuller Brooch, also in the British Museum. Both brooches are circular in shape, made from sheet silver and inlaid with niello and gold. The Strickland Brooch is decorated with highly complex zoomorphic patterns that are deeply carved within the

quatrefoil A quatrefoil (anciently caterfoil) is a decorative element consisting of a symmetrical shape which forms the overall outline of four partially overlapping circles of the same diameter. It is found in art, architecture, heraldry and traditional ...

, whereas the Fuller Brooch is ornamented in a more anthropomorphic style. In the case of the Strickland Brooch, the design includes a series of Trewhiddle style dogs interspersed between canine-like heads.

History of ownership

For a long time, the brooch belonged to the Strickland family of

Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ) is an area of Northern England which was History of Yorkshire, historically a county. Despite no longer being used for administration, Yorkshire retains a strong regional identity. The county was named after its county town, the ...

. Sold by Mrs W. H. Strickland at a

Sotheby's Sotheby's ( ) is a British-founded multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine art, fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...

auction in 1949 to an American buyer, it was denied an export licence and was acquired by the British Museum in the same year. The brooch is considered a

masterpiece A masterpiece, , or ; ; ) is a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or a work of outstanding creativity, skill, profundity, or workmanship. Historically, ...

from the museum's Anglo-Saxon collection, and has played an important part in demonstrating the sophisticated artistry of English silversmiths during the

early Middle Ages The Early Middle Ages (or early medieval period), sometimes controversially referred to as the Dark Ages (historiography), Dark Ages, is typically regarded by historians as lasting from the late 5th to the 10th century. They marked the start o ...

.British Museum Collection
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References

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Description

History of ownership

References

Further reading