File:Medieval zoomorphic annular brooch (FindID 177522).jpg

English: An incomplete cast copper-alloy brooch frame of medieval date (?c. 1200 - c. 1250 AD). It would appear to be part of an annular brooch bearing a zoomorphic motif - an unusual form. Approximately half of the accessory survives, having apparently been cut diagonally. What remains is the majority of one moulded beast and a small part of another, probably both wyverns or dragons. The back is flat and bevelled. The largely extant animal has an ovoid body which curves and continues into a tail. There is a break at the narrowed neck (W.: 3.4mm). On the outer edge is a wing in the form of a triangle with rounded corners (L.: 13mm, W.: 4.5mm, Th.: 2.1 mm). Opposite the wing,on the inner edge, is a vestigial foreleg. On the back the bevelling between neck and fore leg is pronounced. In a similar arrangement, there is a moulded hind leg on the inner edge. This is in higher relief than the foreleg; the body tapers from hind leg to head. Centrally on the beast's body (at an angle of around 45 degrees to the vertical, such that it splays out and follows the curve) is a second sub-triangular wing.

That the brooch was symmetrical, in the form of a pair of beasts, is suggested by a second clawed foot and lower tail surviving opposite the surviving beast, beyond a sub-rectangular joining element. On its lower edge (below the tail) are three moulded knops. Above the central one is a further raised knop, around which are four circular perforations arranged in a square. Above this is a tongue which extends beyond the element in an asymmetrical rounded triangle.

The original location of the pin can be conjectured from zoomorphic annular brooches illustrated in Binski (see Notes). The pin would have been looped on the left inner edge on the upper surface and would have rested on the right inner edge.  On the dragon brooch facing in the work cited it is looped centrally, while the present one does not allow for this (there is only potential for a pin to be looped around the fore leg if it joined the head -  the incompleteness of the present object means we cannot be certain about the original arrangement). It is plausible that the pin was looped on between the heads, as in other examples recorded on the Database (see Notes).  The tongue-shaped protrusion on the joining element could have acted as a pin rest.

The upper surface of this very well made brooch is finely decorated. The body of the extant beast has rows of fine circular punches which follow the curve (four rows on the inner surface below the central wing, and three rows on the outer surface beyond the wing; the lower rows on the inner surface stop before the hind leg, with two rows continuing above it, reducing to a single row along the ridge of the tail; there is even punched decoration to infill the gap above the wing before which the two main rows meet). At the junction of hind leg and body is a series of small longitudinal incisions. The feet both have three longitudinal incisions and the wings too are individually decorated on their upper surfaces. At their widest point they have a pair of transverse incisions, from which three diagonal incisions taper towards each other at the base of the wing. Finally, the tongue on the joining element has diverging diagonal incised decoration. The punched decoration and incised work on the wings is paralleled on a wyvern depicted on an early 13th-century seal matrix illustrated in Harvey and McGuinness (1996, 45; ref. 39).