hello everyone so this video is going to cover the purse cover which is an example of early medieval art from the anglo-saxons and this was made around the year um 625 ce sorry the c he's missing from the screen there common era being the time period that we're in now okay so on the screen we can see the purse cover okay and so um this is a small piece the sizes are on the screen here let me highlight that so it's just over seven inches by three inches so right quite small this would have been made to cover like a leather pouch right so this was the the cover the flap right on a um leather pouch it would have been attached by the three hinges that we see on the top right here that's how it would have attached to the leather pouch and likely the um leather pouch would have held gold coins so this lid um the materials here used to create this this is a very high quality work that would have indicated one's status okay this wasn't just anyone's first cover this would have been a wealthy important individual in anglo-saxon society at the time which we know because of how this was made and what it was um made out of okay so i'm putting a vocabulary term up on the screen here this is closing a it is a decorative metal working technique where enamel glass or gemstones are separated by strips of metal all right so this whole piece here that we're looking at this was made mostly out of gold and gemstones that's what you see here all the yellow you see that's gold um and then our sort of um blues and maroons and a little black and whites those are smaller gemstones and we can see that the gold makes the outlines and the um gemstones right they they fill in the interior of the metal working now that white background what we see today is a replacement originally that was whale bone and over time that deteriorated and so to display this um the museum and this is owned by the uh british museum in london put a appropriate backing that would replicate what this would look like if it really was still whale bone but it's not actual whale bone behind it today okay now we know this is made using the close and name method we know that it's made from highly valuable materials like gold like whale bone and that that indicates the status of the person who owned this right who wore this now how do we know that this is early medieval like what characteristics do we see here that would tell us this is an early medieval artwork i have a checklist for that okay the characteristics of early medieval artwork we see interwoven motifs we see animal motifs and we see a mixing of old pagan and new christian beliefs um you know anglo-saxon territory you know we're out in uh was to the united kingdom that's still one of the last areas of western europe that christianity reaches it reaches their centuries after you know it sweeps around the mediterranean portion of western europe that has a lot to do with um christianity spreading and what was the roman empire and the i mean for the time period parts of the united kingdom were part of the roman empire but it really was an outlier it wasn't as incorporated into the culture of the empire as areas on mainland europe okay so let's break down what we see and i'm going to focus for this piece on the interwoven motifs and the animal motifs i want to show you some details here okay so right at the center here we have eagles attacking ducks that is the motif we see so it's a pear motif they are symmetrical and they're mirrored right we could divide this in half they match on either side for the most part um but they mirror each other now the ducks okay these are the smaller animals with the sort of curved bills right here the eagles they are on top you can see the beaks of the eagles curling around here and so that's how we know that they are attacking the ducks now these are this is an abstractive design it's stylized this is not what eagles or ducks look like during the medieval period right it's not what they look like now but we once we understand how to read them we can see it right it doesn't you're when i explain these articles and decks you're like oh yeah yeah i see that but um it's not perfectly accurate to reality and that's fine uh early medieval artwork tends to be abstracted designs these are stylized designs and so we see both the animals in profile here right profile means we're seeing them from the side the beaks of the eagles again curve downward into the um ducks but very nicely into the concave of the ducks bill sort of look at this area right here right they fit together very nicely that attention to detail in the design here is um really quite important uh some other examples okay looking what we see on either side of the eagles and ducks we have a man between two beasts and so we can see the man we see him in in frontal view right we're looking straight at him we can see his face looks a bit mask-like in our interpretation of this um he's facing us straight on the there's a beast on either side and again symmetry here is important the mirroring is important right um symmetry is important to each of these individual elements of our purse cover and to the whole purse cover itself the entire design we find symmetry throughout um the beasts are in profile it looks like they could be attacking the man right there heads and mouths are going to the head of our man we see the beasts back lay hind legs and tail interweaving with the man's legs right they are engaged here perhaps engaged in the battle right this there's some open interpretation here we're not sure entirely um but right that's what we have going on here and then at the top of our first cover we have these um interlacing patterns and just geometric designs they're purely linear they're geometric they're abstracted right and so um let me see i want to focus on this one right here so the one um which is in the center of the purse cover but for us it's off in the corner here right look at this interlacing pattern right you should sort of imagine just following the lacing here through this right and following it to the end and allowing your eye to move through this and figure out the patterns and the lacing this sort of designs these interlacing patterns with animal figures this is something that we see a lot of in northwestern europe is pretty distinctive for this region so right we have our characteristics now what does this tell us about anglo-saxon culture um a lot of what we're seeing here on the purse cover this is there's decorative but it's not purely decorative and so unfortunately some of the symbolism is lost to us um the anglo-saxons were huge fans of like riddles and puzzles and so there would have been a deeper symbolic meaning to what we're seeing here it likely would there would have been a narrative a storytelling aspect to it um an anglo-saxon would have been able to read the imagery here to understand the references in symbolism and that's loss to us we can appreciate this for the skill level like this was clearly a incredibly talented metal worker creating this um and the it's a detail and the aesthetic quality but the symbolic meaning unfortunately we're we're not sure we don't have all those cultural references but an important aspect to take away is that you were expected to think about this you were expected to engage with it spend time viewing it there was a real engagement expected with cr arts at this time right that this is an item that would have been appreciated another example um of an artwork from this period associated with uh anglo-saxon england and with the sun who ex i don't wanna say expedition but um excavation sorry sentence explanation this is a belt buckle again a very small piece this is just over five inches by two inches um but look at the design here right it's interlacing it's complex there's a high level of craftsmanship to create this and it's gold it's completely gold so that tells us you know again it's a status symbol it indicates the wealth of the person who would have owned this and these belt buckles like this were commonly used in anglo-saxon england to indicate the the wealth of the man who was um wearing this in terms of weight this almost weighs a pound right so it has a presence to it but what i wanted to bring this in for is the the interlacing patterns and how you would have read this and so this is a diagram that was created by the british museum which also uh owns this piece to explain what we're seeing here and so um we can see that you know the the interlacing part up here towards one end of the buckle that represents um serpents and then as we move on right here we have the representation of a bird and then we have more animal figures in this center right here and then the animal figure at the other end as well and so again just us looking at this we might miss this because we don't know all of those cultural references but if you spend time looking at this analyzing it following the line work more and more of this starts to pop out and that's what's interesting what's exciting about uh anglo-saxon and early medieval artwork okay so um the main work i want you to know from this is our purse cover there we go yeah our first cover the belt buckle is also good it's an exciting piece but i just brought that one in to support the discussion right to show that what we see in the purse cover isn't a one-off this is uh stylistic characteristics of what we see in the early medieval period