“Posamenterie” Fibula
Bronze
Bronze Age, Central Europe
Circa 1200 B.C.
Height: 6 7/8 inches (17.5 cm)
Bronze Age dress generally consisted of a heavy wool cloak fastened at the shoulder by any one of a variety of brooch (fibula) types. With eight small spirals attached to the bow and a much larger spiral catch-plate, the “Posamenterie” type is one of the most distinctive of the central and eastern European fibulae. Named after a site in Silesia, a region between modern-day Poland and the Czech Republic, the pin, bow and catch-plate of the Posamenterie are all made up of a single wire which has been worked into a complex series of coils and curves.
Finger Ring
Bronze
Bronze Age, Central Europe
circa 1200 B.C.
Height: 2 1/2 inches (6.5 cm)
The late Bronze Age in central Europe saw a flourishing of jewelry made of a single strand of wire, bronze or gold, twisted into spirals. Often, as with this ring, the simplest of materials yielded rather astonishing results--as if the craftsmen were making a three-dimensional drawing in space.
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