| From Treasures of Irish Art 1500 BC to 1500 AD:
"Tara" pseudopenannular brooch
Early Christian period (second phase), eighth century Bronze, gilded,
with added amber, gold, glass, silver, and copper
L.22.5cm
Bettystown, County Meath
NMI,R.4015
This famous brooch was not found at Tara; the name was given to it by a
jeweler through whose hands it passed. The actual discovery was made
on the seashore at Bettystown, County Meath, near where a block of
cliff had collapsed after erosion by the waves.
The brooch is to the Ardagh chalice what the Book of Kells is to to
the Book of Durrow; the relatively large Ardagh chalice has areas of
unadorned silver, but the small Tara brooch (it seems too late now to
shake off the eponym) is crowded with detailed decoration front and
back. As with the chalice, design, technique, and materials are of the
highest quality.
The broken plaited wire still attached to one side may be no more
than a safety chain or may indicate that this surviving brooch is one
of a former pair. A stylized animal head at the brooch end of the
chain is hinged to an ovoid plate with paired segments of animal heads
at each end; two human faces, one upright, the other inverted, lie in
the center of the plate. The chain is fastened to the plate between
the two outer animal heads; the two inner heads grip a similar animal
head connected to the ring of the brooch. When the brooch was recently
restored in the research laboratories of the British Museum in London,
the human faces were shown to be of molded purple glass and not of
amethyst as had been supposed; other molded glass studs are present
elsewhere on the brooch.
On the back are two trapezoidal plates; these bear a dark ultimate
La Tene design against a silver background. The plated were thought to
be of silver, with the darkcolor produced by niello, but the recent
laboratory work shows that they are of silvered copper and that the
design is created by intaglio cutting, which when first worked would
have been rich copper red against a silver background.
In the eighteenth century cabinetmakers' apprentices had to make
model furniture with all its ornament fully developed. The small Tara
brooch can almost be regarded as a model, constructed to demonstrate
every skill the eighth-century jeweler knew.
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