At the end of this month I’ll be heading back to the UK for a few days. Yorkshire and Lincolnshire are my first destinations - partly to catch up with friends and family, but also to get my fix of treasure hunting and all things historic.
Just over a year ago Arthur and I found the small Saxon gold object that set a lot of this recent journey in motion. Unfortunately he can’t join me this time, so I’ll be flying solo, but I’m excited to see what I will uncover. The following video shows another dig where I discovered a beautiful jetton (a type of coin-like token from the middle ages), my first silver hammered coin around 800 years old and a mysterious silver object!
Metal detecting has a wonderful rhythm to it – you could say it’s a type of meditation. Long stretches of quiet walking, eyes rhythmically going left and right, attention fixed on the soil and the different tones of the signals from the machine. One is in nature and connecting to the history of the land – sounds good to me.
London as always is on my list and I have applied for private viewings at the British Museum (image above) to research a selection of ancient gold objects. The focus is on gold – Anglo-Saxon pieces, along with Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age gold. I’ve also asked to see a couple of pieces connected to Sutton Hoo, if access allows. With that amount of gold I wouldn’t be surprised if I am flanked by a couple of fairly serious-looking security guards as I dribble over the pieces.
For me this kind of visit is invaluable. Seeing historic objects up close reveals things you simply don’t notice in photographs. The scale, the wear, the tool marks, the subtle details of how something was made.
All of it feeds straight back into jewellery design.