Item description
- Object: Shallow silver dish with gilding and a chased design showing a lion and second smaller lion or perhaps a hound within a guilloche border
- Date: ca 10th century AD
- Culture: Early Hungarian
- Dimensions: 18.3 cm diameter
The dish takes the form of a circular shallow dish raised from a single piece of silver. There is a small attachment hole at the top near the rim. The centre has a design showing a standing lion with a smaller lion or perhaps a hound, leaping at its front. This is within a circular guilloche border. This dish is close in concept and form to one from Zeleny Yar in Siberia, from the Hermitage collection. This appears to have a small handle or ornamental loop riveted to the top of the bowl and the small hole on the present object may possibly be witness to a similar attachment here, but other dishes of this type with hole and no attachment are known. The general type seems to be found over a wide area but a proposed Magyar origin is likely, based on comparison with silverwork from Pannonia related to the Magyar Conquest period.
The design on the dish was entirely worked in outline with a small chasing tool, as shows in a detail of the smaller lion’s hind leg. The flat field around the lion and the centres of the guilloche loops are gilded. The presence of mercury shows that mercury or fire gilding was used. In fire gilding, mercury is mixed with gold to form a buttery amalgam. This spread on the area of metal to be gilded and then the work heated. The mercury passes off as highly toxic mercury vapour, leaving the gold adhering to the underlying metal. Slight cracking is present and is a good sign of age. This type of cracking is termed stress corrosion cracking and results from corrosion within the alloy which takes place along the boundaries of the crystal grains making. It is a witness to the age and fragility of the silver, and is difficult to replicate without significant and readily identifiable modifications of the alloy.
Analyses were carried out on various surfaces of the bowl using portable x-ray fluorescence analysis. The results were as follows (each an average of 2):
| Silver | Copper | Gold | Lead | Zinc |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 96.49% | 2.33% | 0.63% | 0.05% | 0.41% |
No other elements were detected with certainty at levels resolvable by the equipment apart from a trace of iron which certainly derives from the burial environment, plus mercury.
The small presence of gold and lead is expected in ancient and antique silver prior to the development in refining techniques introduced in the nineteenth century. The low level of zinc probably derives from the copper with which the silver was alloyed. The gilded areas showed elevated levels of mercury indicating, as noted above, that that the bowl was gilded using the mercury or firegilding technique as would be expected at that period. No elements were detected that would cast any doubt on the authenticity of the object. The examination noted above regarding the materials and technology of the dish provides reasonable grounds to have confidence at the time of writing that the object is of early date. The stress corrosion cracking supports this view. Therefore, the silver dish with lions represents one of a few survived examples of the early Hungarian silverwork from the Conquest Period.