The Wilton Cross
Anglo-Saxon, AD
675-700
From Wilton, Norfolk,
England
A cross-shaped gold and garnet
cloisonné pendant set
with an Early Byzantine coin
This pendant displays the reverse of a
lightweight solidus of
the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius (reigned AD 610-41), which can be
dated to between 613 and 630. The coin reverse, with a cross potent
(with bars across the ends of the arms) on a stepped base, has been
mounted upside down, perhaps so that it appeared the correct way up
to the wearer.
The coin is
held in a
filigree
collar and surrounded by a ring of
garnet
cloisonné.
The three flaring arms of the cross each contain a pattern of
mushroom-shaped cells separated by arrowhead-shaped cells. This
combination may itself be read as a stepped cross. The creation of
cryptic motifs within a larger
cloisonné pattern was a
favourite device of Germanic jewellers from the fifth to the
seventh centuries.
The
dated coin means that the Wilton Cross could not have been made
before AD 613. In fact, the cross can also be dated by comparison
with other high-quality Anglo-Saxon jewellery with overall garnet
cloisonné. The
combination of cell-shapes is paralleled on the Sutton Hoo
ornaments and on a
cloisonné cross found at
Ixworth in Suffolk and now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. These
exceptionally fine pieces of jewellery were probably made in an
East Anglian workshop active in the early seventh century
AD.
L. Webster and J. Backhouse, The making of England: Anglo-S, exh. cat. (London, The British Museum Press, 1991)
R.L.S. Bruce-Mitford, Aspects of Anglo-Saxon archaeo (London, Gollancz, 1974)