Print page | Email lot to a friend
Back to previous pageLOT 0271
Sold for (Inc. bp): £15,500
5TH CENTURY BC
1" (16 grams, 27mm overall, 23.48mm internal diameter (approximate size British Z+3 1/2, USA 14 1/4, Europe 33.42, Japan 32)).
A broad flat-section gold hoop with expanded plaque; band of reserved scrolls on a hatched field with 'owl' masks to the shoulders, pointillé borders; scrolls forming two addorsed facing human masks on the plaque each with lentoid eyes, herringbone eyebrows, reserved nose and lower lip, billeted moustache swept to the sides and joining the scrolled shoulders; beaded bar between the faces with central roundel.
PROVENANCE:
Property of a German lady living in London; acquired from Lord McAlpine of West Green, Bond Street, London, W1, in the early 1990s. Supplied with a positive X-Ray Fluorescence metal analysis certificate.
PUBLISHED:
Accompanied by an Art Loss Register certificate.
LITERATURE:
Cf. Megaw, R.& V. Celtic Art. From its Beginnings to the Book of Kells, London, 1989, item 79.
FOOTNOTES:
The origins of the human mask motif are discussed by Megaw and Megaw (p.70), who trace development from Etruscan faces, with and without beards. Full images of figures are rare in the early La Tène artistic tradition but masks are ubiquitous in the Rhineland and parts of Central Europe.
