A brooch is a decorative jewelry item designed to be attached to garments, often to fasten them together. It is usually made of metal, often silver or gold or some other material. Brooches are frequently decorated with enamel or with gemstones and may be solely for ornament or serve a practical function as a clothes fastener. The earliest known brooches are from the Bronze Age. As fashions in brooches changed rather quickly, they are important chronological indicators. In archaeology, ancient European brooches are usually referred to by the Latin term fibula.
The Ardagh Hoard, best known for the Ardagh Chalice, is a hoard of metalwork from the 8th and 9th centuries. Found in 1868 by two young local boys, Jim Quin and Paddy Flanagan, it is now on display in the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin. It consists of the chalice, a much plainer stemmed cup in copper-alloy, and four brooches — three elaborate pseudo-penannular ones, and one a true pennanular brooch of the thistle type; this is the latest object in the hoard, and suggests it may have been deposited around 900 AD.
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. The brooch is widely considered the most complex and ornate of its kind, and would have been commissioned to be worn as a fastener for the cloak of a high ranking cleric or as ceremonial insignia of high office for a High King of Ireland in Irish Early Medieval society.
Celtic art is associated with the peoples known as Celts; those who spoke the Celtic languages in Europe from pre-history through to the modern period, as well as the art of ancient peoples whose language is uncertain, but have cultural and stylistic similarities with speakers of Celtic languages.
Migration Period art denotes the artwork of the Germanic peoples during the Migration period. It includes the Migration art of the Germanic tribes on the continent, as well the start of the Insular art or Hiberno-Saxon art of the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic fusion in Britain and Ireland. It covers many different styles of art including the polychrome style and the animal style. After Christianization, Migration Period art developed into various schools of Early Medieval art in Western Europe which are normally classified by region, such as Anglo-Saxon art and Carolingian art, before the continent-wide styles of Romanesque art and finally Gothic art developed.
Insular art, also known as Hiberno-Saxon art, was produced in the post-Roman era of Great Britain and Ireland. The term derives from insula, the Latin term for "island"; in this period Britain and Ireland shared a largely common style different from that of the rest of Europe. Art historians usually group Insular art as part of the Migration Period art movement as well as Early Medieval Western art, and it is the combination of these two traditions that gives the style its special character.
The Celtic brooch, more properly called the penannular brooch, and its closely related type, the pseudo-penannular brooch, are types of brooch clothes fasteners, often rather large; penannular means formed as an incomplete ring. They are especially associated with the beginning of the Early Medieval period in Ireland and Britain, although they are found in other times and places—for example, forming part of traditional female dress in areas in modern North Africa.
The Hunterston Brooch is a highly important Celtic brooch of "pseudo-penannular" type found near Hunterston, North Ayrshire, Scotland, in either, according to one account, 1826 by two men from West Kilbride, who were digging drains at the foot of Goldenberry Hill, or in 1830. It is now in the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh. Made within a few decades of 700 AD, the Hunterston Brooch is cast in silver, gilt, and set with pieces of amber, and decorated with interlaced animal bodies in gold filigree. The diameter of the ring is 12.2 cm, and in its centre there is a cross and a golden glory representing the Risen Christ, surrounded by tiny bird heads. The pin, which is broken, can travel freely around the ring as far as the terminals, which was necessary for fastening; it is now 13.1 cm long, but was probably originally 15 cm or more.
The National Museum of Ireland – Archaeology is a branch of the National Museum of Ireland located on Kildare Street in Dublin, Ireland, that specialises in Irish and other antiquities dating from the Stone Age to the Late Middle Ages.
Art in Medieval Scotland includes all forms of artistic production within the modern borders of Scotland, between the fifth century and the adoption of the Renaissance in the early sixteenth century. In the early Middle Ages, there were distinct material cultures evident in the different federations and kingdoms within what is now Scotland. Pictish art was the only uniquely Scottish Medieval style; it can be seen in the extensive survival of carved stones, particularly in the north and east of the country, which hold a variety of recurring images and patterns. It can also be seen in elaborate metal work that largely survives in buried hoards. Irish-Scots art from the kingdom of Dál Riata suggests that it was one of the places, as a crossroads between cultures, where the Insular style developed.
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.
The Breadalbane Brooch is a silver and gilt Celtic penannular brooch probably made in Ireland, but later altered and then found in Scotland. Probably dating to the 8th century, with 9th-century alterations, it is an intricately designed, silver-gilt dress fastener that is closely related to a select group of brooches that were produced in Ireland and Britain during the 'golden age' of late Celtic art. The brooch has been in the British Museum since 1919, and is normally on display.
The Roscrea brooch is a 9th-century Celtic brooch of the pseudo-penannular type, found at or near Roscrea, County Tipperary, Ireland, before 1829. It is made from cast silver, and decorated with zoomorphic patterns of open-jawed animals and gilded gold filigree, and is 9.5 cm in height and 8.3 cm wide. The silver is of an unusually high quality for Irish metalwork of the period, indicating that its craftsmen were both trading materials with settled Vikings, who had first, traumatically, invaded the island in the preceding century, and had absorbed elements of the Scandinavian's imagery and metalwork techniques.
The Soiscél Molaisse is an Irish cumdach that originated from an 8th-century wooden core embellished in the 11th and 15th centuries with metal plates decorated in the Insular style. Until the late 18th century, the shrine held a now-lost companion text, presumed to be a small illuminated gospel book associated with Saint Laisrén mac Nad Froích, also known as Molaisse or "Mo Laisse". In the 6th century, Molaisse founded a church on Devenish Island in the southern part of Lough Erne in County Fermanagh, with which the cumdach is associated.
House-shaped shrine are early medieval portable metal reliquary formed in the shape of the roof of a rectangular building. They originate from both Ireland and Scotland and mostly date from the 8th or 9th centuries. Typical example consist of a wooden core covered with silver and copper alloy plates, and were built to hold relics of saints or martyrs from the early Church era; a number held corporeal remains when found in the modern period, presumably they were parts of the saint's body. Others, including the Breac Maodhóg, held manuscripts associated with the commemorated saint. Like many Insular shrines, they were heavily reworked and embellished in the centuries following their initial construction, often with metal adornments or figures influenced by Romanesque sculpture.
The Shrine of Saint Lachtin's Arm is an early 10th century Irish arm-shrine type reliquary made of wood and metal shaped as an outstretched forearm and clenched fist. St. Lachtin's dates to between 1118 and 1121 and is associated with his church in the village of Stuake, Donoughmore, County Cork, but probably originates from Kilnamartyra, also in Cork. It consists of a yew-wood core lined with decorated bronze and silver plates. The wood at the hand is hollowed out to create a reliquary cavity which once held the arm bone of St. Lachtin, but is now empty. The circular cap at its base contains a large transparent gemstone and is inlayed with silver decorated with filigree.
Raghnall Ó Floinn FSA is an Irish art historian and former director of the National Museum of Ireland (NMI), who joined its staff in 1976 and becoming its director in 2013.
The Clonmacnoise Crozier is a late-11th-century Insular crozier that would have been used as a ceremonial staff for bishops and mitred abbots. Its origins and medieval provenance are unknown. It was likely discovered in the late 18th or early 19th century in the monastery of Clonmacnoise in County Offaly, Ireland. The crozier has two main parts: a long shaft and a curved crook. Its style reflects elements of Viking art, especially the snake-like animals in figure-of-eight patterns running on the sides of the body of the crook, and the ribbon of dog-like animals in openwork that form the crest at its top. Apart from a shortening to the staff length and the loss of some inserted gems, it is largely intact and is one of the best-preserved surviving pieces of Insular metalwork.
The Lismore Crozier is an Irish Insular-type crozier dated to between 1100 and 1113 AD. It consists of a wooden tubular staff lined with copper-alloy plates; embellished with silver, gold, niello and glass; and capped by a crook with a decorative openwork crest.
The River Laune Crozier is a late 11th-century Insular crozier, now at the Archaeology branch of the National Museum of Ireland. The object would have been commissioned as a staff of office for a senior clergyman, most likely a bishop. It consists of a wooden core decorated with fitted bronze and silver metal plates. Although the metalwork is somewhat corroded in parts, it is fully intact and considered one of the finest surviving Irish examples, alongside those found at Clonmacnoise and Lismore.
