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The Alfred Jewel and Sight

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2011

Extract

The Alfred jewel, found in 1693 in Newton Park near the Island of Athelney in Somerset, now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, is one of the most famous pieces of late Saxon jewellery. It is an intriguing object which has never been satisfactorily explained. The main facts and theories about it are conveniently summarized in the booklet by Miss Joan Kirk (now Mrs. J. R. Clarke) published by the Ashmolean Museum. This present note is mainly concerned with the use of the Alfred jewel and the Minster Lovell jewel, an object of similar character also described in Miss Kirk's booklet, and with the interpretation of the human figure contained in the Alfred jewel.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1966

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References

page 277 note 1 The Alfred and Minster Lovell Jewels, Oxford, 1948.Google Scholar Much of the basic information in this note is taken from this official booklet, to which the writer is indebted and the reader referred for further information and references to earlier literature. lam also indebted to Mr. D. M. Wilson of theUniversity College, London, Dr. Horace Fairhurst of the University of Glasgow, and the Editor, for having corrected my manuscript and suggested some improvements.

page 278 note 1 e.g. Medieval Archaeology, vol. ii, pl. 8 g, j; Kendrick, T. D., Anglo-Saxon Art to 900, London, 1938, pl. 71Google Scholar, bottom; Mahr, A., ed., Christian Art in Ancient Ireland, vol. i, pl. 19, no. 6Google Scholar; Bakka, E., Some English Decorated Metal Objects Found in Norwegian Viking Graves (Årb. Univ. Bergen, 1963. Hum. serie no. 1), figs. 3, 13, 15, 40, 44, 61Google Scholar; Leeds, E. T., Early Anglo-Saxon Art and Archaeology, Oxford, 1936, pl. 31Google Scholar, top right; Jessup, R., Anglo-Saxon Jewellery, London, 1950, pl. 36, no. 8Google Scholar.

page 278 note 2 Bakka, , op. cit., figs. 3336.Google Scholar

page 278 note 3 Bakka, , op. cit., fig. 12Google Scholar; Kendrick, , op. cit., pl. 34Google Scholar, no. 3; Jessup, , op. cit., pl. 9,Google Scholar no. 6, pl. 30.

page 278 note 4 Schramm, E. P., Herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik (Monumenta Germaniae historica, Schriften, 13/1–3), Stuttgart, 19541956, i, 370–5.Google Scholar

page 279 note 1 Schramm, , op. cit., ii, 392Google Scholar; Stenton, F. M., Anglo-Saxon England, (The Oxford History of England, vol. ii), 2nd. ed., Oxford, 1947, p. 341Google Scholar.

page 279 note 2 Schramm, , op. cit., i, 372.Google Scholar

page 279 note 3 Rice, D. Talbot, ‘New Light on the Alfred Jewel’, Antiq. Journ. 1956, pp. 214–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 279 note 4 Lundström, P., ‘The Man with the Captive Birds’, Acta Archaeologica, xxxi (1960), 190–8.Google Scholar

page 280 note 1 Rice, Talbot, op. cit., p. 216.Google Scholar

page 280 note 2 Loc. cit.

page 280 note 3 Op. cit., fig. 1. Also illustrated and discussed by L'Orange, H. P., Studies on the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient World (Instituttet for Sammenlignende Kulturforskning, ser. A, no. 23), Oslo, 1953, pp. 64 f.Google Scholar and fig. 39b.

page 280 note 4 Rice, Talbot, op. cit., p. 216.Google Scholar

page 280 note 5 L'Orange, op. cit.

page 280 note 6 See p. 279, n. 4.

page 281 note 1 Bruce-Mitford, R. L. S., ‘Late Saxon Discbrooches’, Dark-Age Britain, Studies presented to Leeds, E. T., ed. Harden, D. B., London, 1956), pp. 173–90, pl. 20, figs. 34b, 35, 36Google Scholar; Wilson, D. M., ‘Anglo-Saxon Ornamental Metalwork 700–1100’, Catalogue of Antiquities of the Later Saxon Period, British Museum, 1964, pp. 211–14, 91–98, and pl. 44.Google Scholar

page 281 note 2 Bruce-Mitford, , op. cit., p. 183.Google Scholar

page 282 note 1 Bruce-Mitford, , op. cit., pl. 21s.Google Scholar; Kendrick, , op. cit., pl. 79,Google Scholar no. 2; Wilson, , op. cit., pl. VI.Google Scholar

page 282 note 2 Bruce-Mitford, , op. cit., pp. 180–3.Google Scholar

page 282 note 3 The Abingdon sword has perhaps more points of contact with tenth-century ornament than any other object of the Trewhiddle style group. Compare, e.g., an undulating foliate design and a tenuous animal with similar motifs on the Sitting-bourne scramasax (Wilson, , op. cit., pl. 30, no. 80),Google Scholar and these animals again with those of the King's School, Canterbury, disc brooch (Wilson, , op. cit., fig. 14)Google Scholar where the device on the Abingdon sword of ‘penetration’ of narrow ribbons through broader ornamental details can be paralleled.