File:Early medieval unidentified object (with materials labelled) (FindID 472605).jpg

English: Description: Fragment of thick flat silver object with gold wire and niello decoration. One near-rectilinear corner survives, with two very slightly concave edges meeting at a tiny rounded knop. Around the surviving edges is a border consisting of a ridge with a groove outside.

A drop-shaped recess, with the point towards the corner, is lined a little way in from the edge with a strip of plain gold wire. The drop-shaped field contains a clockwise spiral scroll of extremely worn gold filigree wire; the base of the recess also appears to be gilded. The beaded and plain wires are both thick upright strips of sub-rectangular cross-section, with the beading cut into the top edge of the wire; this technique is known as serrated-band filigree.

Around the outside of the plain wire, the recess has a jagged edge cut into the silver; this would probably have originally have been inlaid, giving the effect of an eye surrounded by eyelashes. Any inlay for the jagged triangles has now entirely vanished, although a tiny fragment of gold wire in the linear space outside the plain wire and within the triangles suggests that it may originally have had a double border, filling the space more effectively. It seems unlikely that the triangles could have been filled with gold inlay and perhaps it is more likely that they held niello, giving the effect of black eyelashes.

The plate is broken at a second recess with a short length of curved jagged edge surviving; there is also a tiny fragment of what may be a third, suggesting that the object may originally have been square with a recess in each corner. There are hints that the spaces around the eye motifs are filled with elongated triquetras, and between the recesses and the triquetras some niello inlay can be seen. Much is now obscured by thick corrosion with a greenish coppery tinge, which appears to have come from the niello.

The reverse is undecorated and has a patch of greenish corrosion. The breaks are all quite fresh.

Dimensions:

It measures 19.35 x 21.0mm and is c. 2mm thick; it weighs 3.1g.

Discussion and Date: The closest parallel to this object is perhaps the King's School, Canterbury brooch, now in the British Museum, which has similar niello decoration and panels of inlaid scrolls or spirals of serrated-band filigree (Wilson 1964, no. 10; Backhouse et al. 1984 no. 16; 1959,2-10,1). Between the circular and lozengiform filigree panels of the Canterbury brooch are complex but not particularly well executed four-element knots in niello, similar to the simple three-looped triquetras of the Shepway fragment.

The serrated-band filigree technique is well known from other 10th-century objects (compare SWYOR-3B5652). Triquetras can be found on other 10th-century objects, for example a silver and niello panel from a house-shaped casket in the British Museum (acc. no. 1954,1201.2; Backhouse et al. 1984, no. 15); and drop-shaped fields can be found on enamelled brooches of the late 10th and 11th centuries (e.g. LON-5E4038).

A 10th-century date therefore seems certain, and as the best parallel comes from Canterbury, the fragment may well have been made near its findspot in Kent. Its original shape and function, and the significance of the eye, are however still mysterious. It can plausibly be reconstructed as a square object with concave edges and four 'eye' motifs, but this still does not help to assign a function.