- Museum number
- 1986,0706.1
- Description
-
Brass hanging bowl; originally with four copper alloy suspension hooks and rings of which three survive. Bowl with simple out-turned rim above carinated shoulder from which the profile falls in a gentle curve to a recessed base. Inside are traces of solder centrally placed on base, indicating a lost circular ornament, and an ancient repair in form of roughly cut rectangular patch of copper alloy, crudely riveted over a tear in beaten metal. Hook-escutcheons soldered to bowl, each in form of disc pierced to show a peltate cross; cast in one with disc, and rising on a curved neck is stylised animal head with shallow rebate cut in to fit rim of bowl.
- Production date
- 500 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Thickness: 6 - 8 millimetres (suspension ring)
-
Diameter: 11 millimetres (basal kick (internal))
-
Diameter: 268 millimetres (rim)
-
Diameter: 19 millimetres (suspension ring)
-
Height: 105 millimetres
-
Weight: 47 grammes (suspension ring)
-
Depth: 17 millimetres (bowl basal kick)
- Curator's comments
- Bruce-Mitford 2005
Discovery and history: The bowl was acquired by the British Museum in 1986. It was then at the Scunthorpe, Humberside Museum. It had been purchased (by an unknown or unnamed purchaser) at an agricultural show in Lincolnshire (place of show unspecified) and retained by the purchaser for an unspecified period of time, before being taken into the Scunthorpe Museum to which it was offered for sale at £10,000. It was stated by the vendor to have come from Norfolk. The vendor refused to give further details. It was said to have been identified “at a London auction house as first-century AD”. An approach to the Curator of the Norwich Castle Museum (Miss Barbara Green, FSA) revealed that the bowl is believed to have been looted (perhaps by metal-detector operators) from the Saxon cemetery site at Field Dalling. The site has been investigated briefly by the Norfolk Archaeological Unit, who also carried out a metal-detector survey of their own to circumvent further action by known metal-detector looters.
The cemetery at Field Dalling is in the civil parish of Saxlingham, but in the ecclesiastical parish of Field Dalling. The site is seven and a half miles north-east of Fakenham and three miles south of the coastal town or village of Blakeney. It is thought that a Coptic bowl from the same site as the hanging-bowl (i.e. from the Field Dalling cemetery) was offered for sale at the same time as the hanging-bowl. A Coptic bowl, now in the possession of Mr Peter Clayton, FSA, is said to have come from Saxlingham (the civil parish containing Field Dalling). It had been in 1978 and 1980-1 in the Elm Hill Stamp Centre, Norwich, with four Anglo-Saxon pots, tweezers, iron knives, and some Romano-British material (information from the Norwich Archaeological Unit). Mr Clayton (in a letter dated 18 October 1989) states that he knows the vendor of the Coptic bowl, who got it directly from the finder. Its provenance at Saxlingham seems established. If the story that the hanging-bowl and a Coptic bowl 'from the same site' were originally sold together, is correct, then the relatively firm provenance of the Coptic bowl should support the belief that the British Museum bowl also came from this Saxon cemetery. The Coptic bowl was sold at Christie's on behalf of the vendor known to Mr Clayton; a Lincolnshire agricultural show is a plausible place for an antiquity illegally obtained in Norfolk to be offered for sale out of its area. The landowner Sir John White has prosecuted looters from the Field Dalling site.
Description: Complete bowl with four hook-escutcheons, three of which survive. The basal kick is deep and square in profile. The bowl is in fine condition and has a deep blue-green patina*. The finder observed an interior base escutcheon, and the marks left by this are visible; the escutcheon itself is now lost. There was no escutcheon under the base, and none of the escutcheons has a frame. The bowl is of full shape. It has a small square repair patch in the interior with a rivet in each corner; the rivet-heads show on the outside of the bowl. The rim development is of A type, hammered down to give a pronounced internal overhang as well as being spread to the exterior. The escutcheons were either detached when found, or soon became so. They were stuck back on the bowl (presumably for the agricultural show sale) and are incorrectly placed (i.e. not accurately centred on the solder marks from which they originally came). They are plain and show a symmetrical openwork design. There are four small pelta-shaped openings, the round backs of the peltae facing inwards, and leaving between them in the bronze a central equal-armed cross shape. Round the periphery of the escutcheon, opposite the short outward-turned stem of each pelta opening, is a small triangular opening with lightly curved sides, and inner point opposing the projecting stems of the pelta openings. The escutcheons are solid castings and dished at the back. The bronze residual areas, or foliate terminations of the cross arms, can also be read as peltae, or are pelta-shaped.
The hooks, which are broad and thick, show two corn-grain like swellings set obliquely, chevron-wise, at the base (cf. the Twyford (1) escutcheon, Jewry Wall Museum, Leicester: A14/1871, and others there cited), and terminate in simplified but strongly stylized or moulded animal heads, with prominent ears and turned up snouts. The undersurface of the jaw is flat and stepped to receive or fit the rim of the bowl, and the snouts are squared off or flattened at the point, where they measure 9 mm wide by 7 mm in height. The neck and base of the hook show polish and are of a brassy colour; the inside curves of the hooks show polish due to the wear of the rings. The sides of the hooks are bevelled or faceted. The rings are thick, solid and heavy, and grooved externally with a wide groove 4 mm or 5 mm across. They show a slight thinning or wear from contact with their hooks.
Discussion: Strongly akin both in quality and appearance to the Wilton bowl (South Wiltshire Museum, Salisbury (on permanent loan from the Earl and Countess of Pembroke)), which also has four openwork hook-escutcheons, but the Field Dalling escutcheons are soldered on, not riveted as in the case of Wilton. The Field Dalling bowl is of large size (over 260 mm in diameter) and of first-class workmanship. Its weight when complete was approximately 1000 gm (2¼ lb.). It is a fine example of the openwork group, and shares the quadripartite design with Tummel Bridge (National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh: NMS X.FC 165 and 166) and Wilton.
Bibliography: Brenan, J. 1988, ‘Hanging-bowls and their Contexts: An Archaeological Survey of their Socio-Economic Significance from the Fifth to Seventh centuries AD’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of London, 442; Brenan, J., 1991, ‘Hanging Bowls and their Contexts: An Archaeological Survey of their Socio-Economic Significance from the Fifth to Seventh centuries AD’, BAR British Series 220, Oxford, cat. no. 64.
*Postscript
Since Dr Bruce-Mitford wrote this report work by Dr Paul Craddock and Susan La Neice of the British Museum Department of Scientific Research has established that this bowl is made of brass and not the usual bronze, though interestingly the escutcheons themselves are made of bronze.
- Location
- On display (G41/dc16/sC)
- Exhibition history
-
Exhibited:
2005 14 Mar-30 Oct, Woodbridge, The National Trust-Sutton Hoo Exhibition Centre, Hanging Bowls
- Acquisition date
- 1986
- Department
- Britain, Europe and Prehistory
- Registration number
- 1986,0706.1