page_title: Celtic brooch
section_title: Golden Age
hierarchical_section_title: Celtic brooch / History / Golden Age
caption_attribution_description: English: Tara Brooch in NMI, back
context_page_description: 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 the British Isles, although they are found in other times and places—for example, forming part of traditional female dress in areas in modern North Africa.
  Beginning as utilitarian fasteners in the Iron Age and Roman period, they are especially associated with the highly ornate brooches produced in precious metal for the elites of Ireland and Scotland from about 700 to 900, which are popularly known as Celtic brooches or similar terms. They are the most significant objects in high-quality secular metalwork from Early Medieval Celtic art, or Insular art, as art historians prefer to call it. The type continued in simpler forms such as the thistle brooch into the 11th century, during what is often known as the Viking Age in Ireland and Scotland.
context_section_description: By shortly after 700, highly elaborate, large brooches in precious metal and gems were being produced. These were clearly expressions of high status for the wearer, and use the full repertoire of goldsmith's techniques at a very high level of skill. They continued to be produced for about 200 years; the Pictish brooches are much more homogeneous in design than the Irish ones, which may indicate a shorter period of production, possibly from "the mid-eighth to the beginning of the ninth centuries". Each surviving design is unique, but the range of types established in the more modest earlier brooches are developed and elaborated upon.  There was no previous tradition of very ornate brooches in Ireland, and this development may have come from contact with Continental elites who wore large fibulae as marks of status.  Such contacts were certainly made, especially by travelling monks.
  Archaeological, and some literary, evidence suggests that brooches in precious metal were a mark of royal status, along with wearing a purple cloak, and it is probably as such that they are worn by Christ on a high cross at Monasterboice and by the Virgin Mary on another.  All surviving examples, numbering over 50 (not all complete) in the case of the Irish ones, have been recovered by excavation, or at least finding in the ground, but where the detailed circumstances of the find are known, few are from graves, and finds in hoards are much more common.  When they were in graves, the burials are often much later than the date of the brooch, as in a brooch in the Irish 8th century style found in a Norse burial in Westray, Orkney, and possibly the Kilmainham Brooch.  Elaborate brooches often have one or more names—presumed to be those of owners—scratched on the reverse, often in runes. Plainer brooches in bronze and similar alloys continue to be found in much larger numbers.
  The most elaborate Irish brooches are pseudo-penannular, while the Scottish ones mostly retain true penannular forms.  Most are silver-gilt, the gilding often partial. Some are gilded base metal, of bronze or copper-alloy; only one solid gold Irish brooch is known, a 9th-century one from Loughan, County Londonderry, which is less elaborate than most of the series, though the standard of work is very high. However, some brooches have a hidden recess which may have contained small lead weights to make the precious metal used seem more valuable than it actually was.
  In Ireland, the head of the pin might be turned into a focus for decoration, sometimes using a "kite"-shaped plate, such as that on the Tara Brooch; in Scotland, the pin-heads were simple circles formed by bending the pin back on itself. Scottish terminals are more often distinct lobed or square shapes extending beyond the circle of the ring on both sides, while in Irish examples, the terminals typically extend inside the ring forming another curve, but not much outside it, or sometimes form a straight line across the interior of the ring.  Irish brooches may only join the two terminals by narrow strips, or not only eliminate the gap entirely, but have a central zone of decoration where the gap between the terminals would have been; the brooches found with the Ardagh Chalice show both types.  
  The main body was normally cast, and a number of elements of two-piece moulds have been found.  Many brooches have cells for studs or bosses that are most often round hemispheres, but may be square, lozenges or other shapes; very often the studs themselves are now missing.  These are in a variety of materials including glass, enamel, amber, and gemstones found locally, although not including any of the classic modern "precious stones", or even the garnets found in Anglo-Saxon jewellery.  However the millefiori glass rods sometimes used appear to have been imported from Italy, like those used in the Anglo-Saxon jewellery from Sutton Hoo; examples of the rods have been excavated in both Ireland and England.
  Like the Insular chalices and other metalwork, the very ornate Irish brooches were mostly made in many pieces which are pinned
caption: Tara Brooch, rear view.
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