| Artres Treasure | |
|---|---|
 Part of the Artres Treasure displayed in the British Museum | |
| Material | Gold and precious stones |
| Created | 6th Centuries AD |
| Period/culture | Merovingian |
| Present location | British Museum |
| Identification | 1897 AF.514a-b; AF.515; AF.518; AF.524-525; AF.3328; |
The Artres Treasure is an important Merovingian hoard found at Artres, northern France in the nineteenth century. Most of the treasure is now in the collection of the British Museum in London. [1]
The rich grave group was found in 1855 under a small mound near the town of Artres in Pas-de-Calais, northern France. Dating to the middle of the 6th Century AD, it probably belong to an affluent and powerful Frankish woman. Most of the hoard was purchased by the curator and philanthropist Augustus Wollaston Franks, who bequeathed it to the British Museum in 1897. [2] It has recently been shown that a gold disk pendant (now in the Ashmolean Museum) was also part of the hoard.
The Artres Treasure for the most part includes luxurious jewellery fashionable at the Frankish court. It is composed of two large gilded silver fan-shaped brooches, a pair of small gold and garnet encrusted brooches in the shape of a bird, a pair of matching earrings, a crystal ball pendant and a small silver bracelet. Other items in the hoard included a finger ring and a large crystal ball; the whereabouts of these objects are unknown.
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present. The British Museum was the first public national museum to cover all fields of knowledge.
The Tara Brooch is an Irish Celtic brooch, dated to the late-7th or early-8th century, of the pseudo-penannular type. It is made from bronze, silver and gold, with a head formed from a circular ornate ring that is intricately decorated on both sides. Its upper half is hollow while the lower half is solid with fused terminals. The brooch was constructed from numerous individually made pieces, and its front and reverse sides are both decorated with around 50 inserted cast panels containing highly ornate filigree. The borders and terminals contain multiple panels holding multi-coloured studs, interlace patterns, filigree and Celtic spirals. It is widely considered the most complex and ornate of its kind, and would have been commissioned as a fastener for the cloak of a high ranking cleric or as ceremonial insignia of high office for a High King of Ireland.
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Trewhiddle style is a distinctive style in Anglo-Saxon art that takes its name from the Trewhiddle Hoard, discovered in Trewhiddle, Cornwall in 1770. Trewhiddle ornamentation includes the use of silver, niello inlay, and zoomorphic, plant and geometric designs, often interlaced and intricately carved into small panels. Famous examples include the Pentney Hoard, the Abingdon sword, the Fuller brooch, and the Strickland brooch.
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The Belluno Treasure is an important Lombardic hoard found at Belluno, Italy in the nineteenth century that has been part of the British Museum's collection since 1897.
The Bergamo Treasure is a large Lombardic and Ostrogothic hoard found near the city of Bergamo in northern Italy in the nineteenth century. It was mostly acquired by the British Museum in 1897.
The Galloway Hoard, currently held in the National Museum of Scotland, is a hoard of more than 100 gold, silver, glass, crystal, stone, and earthen objects from the Viking Age discovered in the historical county of Kirkcudbrightshire in Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland in September 2014. Found on Church of Scotland land, the hoard has been described by experts as "one of the most significant Viking hoards ever found in Scotland". With years of extensive study and research, scholars are still not certain who buried the hoard, why they did so and whether they were Vikings or Anglo-Saxons. During the Viking Age, Galloway found itself squeezed between two Viking kingdoms and essentially cut off from other Anglo-Saxons in Britain - "Galloway is where these different cultures were meeting. It’s not just Scandinavians, but people from Britain and Ireland as well."
Scottish jewellery is jewellery created in Scotland or in a style associated with Scotland, which today often takes the form of the Celtic style. It is often characterised by being inspired by nature, Scandinavian mythology, and Celtic knot patterns. Jewellery has a history in Scotland dating back to at least the Iron Age.
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