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The Garnet Code

19/4/2023

 
​​This article is part of a series about our increasing understanding of the meanings behind the designs of Anglo-Saxon art. For other chapters click here.

​
​Secrets in the Stones: Decoding Anglo-Saxon Art. Part 4
​
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The Garnet Code

​Early Anglo-Saxon jewellery is renowned for its use of gold and garnet work. Until now, the significance of garnets as a material has not been thoroughly investigated. In this article, and a public lecture at Soulton Hall, Shropshire (delivered simultaneously with this article’s timed release) James D. Wenn draws together the geometry of the garnet crystal with the geometry within Anglo-Saxon art and architecture, signposting to the previous articles in this series. This is then coupled with later examples of this geometry, notably the Cosmati Pavement in Westminster Abbey, to link the philosophical meaning of this geometry to Plato’s book ‘Timaeus’, and both pre-Christian and Christian cosmology and theology.​



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Secrets in the Stones Series - Recap & Countdown

18/4/2023

 

It's almost time!   We will imminently be sharing the central discoveries of the 'Secrets in the Stones' research. ​

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​A talk at @soultonhall - a place central to this story - will be delivered by James D. Wenn to representatives of key institutions impacted by this research.

Coinciding, the central chapter of our series ‘Secrets in the Stones - Decoding Anglo-Saxon Art’ will be published here.    


In previous chapters;
  • We introduced the already growing consensus that migration-period art represents a visual language which we are only just beginning to decode (Introduction).

  • James presented and explored a hypothesis that jewelled scabbard-bosses from Sutton Hoo and the Staffordshire Hoard might relate to Ptolemy’s Harmonics, introducing the possibility that such ‘barbarian art’ might actually encode an understanding of Classical learning. (Chapter 1: From Egypt to East Anglia: design in the Sutton Hoo scabbard bosses)

  • Æd explored an apparent, but previously little-discussed theme running through Anglo-Saxon art: their obsession with lozenge and tilted-square shapes, from the enigmatic 8th century ‘lozenge brooch’ to coins and manuscripts. (Chapter 2: Follow the Lozenges)

  • In the most recent instalment Æd explored a representation of stately or sacred architecture in the Staffordshire Hoard, finding close correspondence to particular rare surviving examples of Anglo-Saxon stone architecture, and proposing that Hoard pommel cat 52 represented a vision of a lost early Anglo-Saxon shrine, baptistry or temple.(Chapter 3: Anglo Saxon Temple Discovered)

These chapters have been laying the foundations for what will be revealed soon, in:
  • Secrets in the Stones- Decoding Anglo-Saxon Art. Chapter 4: The Garnet Code.

Anglo-Saxon Temple Discovered

2/4/2023

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​This article is part of a series about our increasing understanding of the meanings behind the designs of Anglo-Saxon art. For other chapters click here.

​
​Secrets in the Stones: Decoding Anglo-Saxon Art. Part 3
​
Early Anglo-Saxon Temple Discovered
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A gold-and-garnet pommel from the Staffordshire Hoard, which once adorned the jewelled hilt of the sword of an early Anglo-Saxon prince or king, shows what appear to be vaults or arches beneath 'triangular pediments', hiding in the patterns of its garnets. 

Once dismissed as an imaginative vision of the architecture of Rome by a culture whose architecture was limited to wooden huts and halls, new analysis we present here supports a radically different interpretation: that the pommel is a precise representation of a sophisticated and uniquely 'Anglo-Saxon' building, made decades or even centuries before such structures were previously thought to exist. 
Could this sword mount provide the earliest glimpses of a lost Anglo-Saxon temple?


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Follow the Lozenges

21/3/2023

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​This article is part of a series about our increasing understanding of the meanings behind the designs of Anglo-Saxon art. For other chapters click here.

​Secrets in the Stones: Decoding Anglo-Saxon Art. Part 2
​
Follow the Lozenges

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The early to middle Anglo-Saxon period saw a number of shifts in fashion - often radical and sudden. Examples include the adoption of animal interlaces, or the adoption of filigree and lapidary work over earlier carved-and-cast decoration on items like brooches and buckles, in the late 6th century.
Due to the decline of furnished burials the fashions of the late 7th to 8th centuries were previously largely unknown to us, but a growing number of finds reported to the Portable Antiquities Scheme has allowed a previously unknown brooch type to be categorized. These were bizarre - fragile, and of a radically different design than earlier types, but were of a very specific, highly conserved shape, and appear to have become the main high-status dress item of the period.  Why were they designed in this way? What, if anything, did they signify?   

Our team began discussing this strange fashion in 2020. Little did we know where the trail of the lozenge brooch would lead.... 


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