Sword Pommel

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This handsome sword pommel is one of the finest surviving fragments of Anglo-Saxon goldsmith work. The pommel's quasi-triangular shell, of cast copper alloy, is decorated with silver panels inlaid with niello patterns and framed with silver strips. The two end terminals are animal heads. Although the "cocked-hat" form and the design of the panels look back to late eighth-century sword pommels (examples of which from Windsor, Chiswick, Eyot, and Saint Ninian's Isle are preserved in London, Edinburgh and Oxford), the silver-wire and niello technique used to create the inlaid running spiral patterns on the curved sides seems to have been a specialty of East Anglian metalworkers in the ninth century, during the reign of King Alfred the Great (r. 849–99). Some of the niello designs are similar to those on the well-known Fuller brooch in the British Museum, London, which was made in the late ninth century, perhaps in Alfred's court workshop.

Medieval Art and The Cloisters

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum's collection of medieval and Byzantine art is among the most comprehensive in the world. Displayed in both The Met Fifth Avenue and in the Museum's branch in northern Manhattan, The Met Cloisters, the collection encompasses the art of the Mediterranean and Europe from the fall of Rome in the fourth century to the beginning of the Renaissance in the early sixteenth century. It also includes pre-medieval European works of art created during the Bronze Age and early Iron Age.

Metropolitan Museum of Art