File:Early-Medieval-Anglo-Saxon Hanging Bowl Mount (FindID 249835).jpg

English: A cast copper alloy hanging bowl mount of Early Medieval/Anglo-Saxon date. The mount is flat, disc shaped and has the remains of cast and enamelled decoration on the front face. A small perforation is visible close to the exterior edge at one side of the mount that has caused the exterior edge to split in addition to a long split heading towards the centre of the disc. This suggests that the mount was possibly modified and re-used at a later date, perhaps as a pendant, although oddly the positioning of the perforation would render the decorative elements at an unusual angle.

The front face of the mount is highly decorative with moulded/cast copper alloy motifs, the fields in between which would originally have been filled with enamelling. Almost all of the enamelling is now missing, however in one or two of the fields can be seen traces of what appears to be an orange/red enamel. At the centre of the disc is an annulet that would presumably have had an enamelled centre. This is surrounded by a triskele with arms that terminate in pelta shaped motifs. The peltae are formed from two triple stranded spirals that spiral in opposite directions. One strand of each spiral extends to form the arm of the triskele, a second strand joins with the corresponding strand of the neighbouring spiral to create a triangular upper edge of the pelta, while the third strand curves back round towards the exterior edge of the disc to link the three peltae together and create a running motif around the edge of the mount. The triangular backs of the peltae each have a small pointed oval/petal shaped field. The strands linking the three peltae together are sub-triangular in shape closest to the edge of each spiral, turning at almost right angles to follow the edge of the disc. They all have three small pointed oval/leaf shaped fields forming a simple trefoil motif. From the joining strands also extends additional single strands that form large spiralled motifs to fill the field in each angle of the triskele. These run clockwise from the peltae spiralling three times before terminating in an expanded U-shaped motif that resembles an opened mouth/beak, a claw, or perhaps simply a geometric/foliate design. Each of these three terminal motifs have two small pointed oval fields. There is a thin circumferential field between the peltae and their joining strands and the exterior edge of the disc, which has a thin copper alloy border. The copperwork on the front face of the mount also shows signs of an added white metal coating.

The back face of the mount is perhaps slightly concave, although it has suffered from post-depositional damage that renders its original form slightly uncertain. It has a flattened surface towards the exterior edge that has an added white metal coating, probably representing solder that affixed the mount to the hanging bowl.

The entire object measures 42.70mm in diameter, 2.16mm in thickness, and weighs 14.10g.

This mount is from a hanging bowl of Early Medieval or Anglo-Saxon date. The decorative motifs of a central triskele terminating in pelta or trumpet shaped decoration is a feature noted on a number of examples by Brenan in her study of Anglo-Saxon hanging bowls (see for example Brenan, 1991: nos. 4, 7, 8, 12, 17, 22, 35, 56, 73). A close parallel to the motifs on the current example is not apparent in her corpus, although the double spiralled pelta and triskele does have some similarities particularly with examples from Woodbridge and Sutton Hoo (Brenan, 1991: nos. 22, 56). The carefully finished exterior edges of the disc indicate that it did not have an attached hook or suspension loop, suggesting its probable use as a decorative mount rather than an escutcheon, and possibly from the interior of the bowl. It should date to the 6th or 7th centuries AD.