File:Early Medieval, Incomplete cloisonne sword-button (FindID 566962).jpg

English: Description: An incomplete circular gold setting, originally with a domed cloisonné garnet setting. The circular backplate is framed by a thin (0.4mm) outer and thicker (1.1mm) inner beaded wire. The thicker wire is carefully made with narrow even beads, but the thin wire has more oblique beads and many Aquätorschnitte, no doubt reflecting the difficulty of manufacturing such extremely fine beaded wire. Part of the narrower wire has broken away and survives loose.

The central cloisonné setting has an outer upright strip which in side view is slightly bent over to retain the garnets. Within this are two curved gold cell walls which form the inner walls of pointed-oval cells with the outer strip forming the outer wall. These are set close together to form a third tapering central cell. One wall is now crushed and the other has sprung away from its junction with the outer strip. Both are taller in the centre, showing that the button had a domed cross-section.

The central tapering cell has no surviving sub-divisions, but each of the smaller pointed-oval cells was originally divided into three with narrower gold walls. Each cell had a T-shaped cell attached to the outer strip, with a short length of wall linking the stem of the T to the curved thicker cell wall. One of these sets of walls has now (since photography) become detached from the backplate and is loose. There is now no scar on the inside of the backplate to show exactly where the narrower walls were attached. There is probably space for a third pointed-oval cell to be fitted in, giving a symmetrical tripartite design, but no evidence survives of this. All the cells are empty with no surviving cement, foils or garnets.

On the undecorated reverse is a circular scar which in places has become a tear, where a fixing was presumably torn away.

Dimensions: It measures 15.32 mm in diameter, and 4.09 mm thick. It weighs 1.7 g.

Discussion: There are several similarly sized gold-and-garnet studs with thick, complex wire frames on the PAS database. NARC-05D4C1, NARC-05D4C1, PAS-E9BEA3 and PAS-A78288 all have circular scars on their reverse, and have been identified as components from brooches, pendants or miscellaneous items. NARC-77D046 is similar, but has a long scar on the reverse; NARC-2CE634 and NMS-Z32B24 again are similar, but have the U-shaped loop on the reverse which is characteristic of a scabbard-button. A larger and more complex example, SF-CB7620, has been identified as a brooch component. The central setting of the early 7th-century Canterbury pendant is c. 13-14mm in diameter and also has a relatively simple domed cloisonné pattern (Webster and Backhouse 1991, no. 10). It is likely that the same basic design of component was used on all of these items.

The scheme of decoration, with curved major cell walls enclosing stepped or T-shaped secondary cloisons, is also found in the similarly sized central boss of the famous early 7th-century disc brooch from grave 205 at Kingston in Kent (Avent 1975, pl. 68; Webster and Backhouse 1991, no. 32a).

Date: Very late 6th or early 7th century, c. 580 to 650 AD.