Merovingian disc brooch

Merovingian Disc brooch with animal heads.

Germanic disc brooch with animal heads in the shape of a sun wheel, modelled on a decorative disc from the Merovingian period.

The historical model for this early medieval disc brooch was a Germanic decorative disc from the Merovingian period from the exhibition of the Romano-Germanic Museum in Cologne, which dates back to the late 6th or early 7th century AD.

Link zum historischen Vorbild...

The Germanic decorative disc came from the collection of Baron von Diergardt, who acquired a large number of historical objects at the beginning of the 20th century. Decorative discs in the shape of sun wheels were widespread among the Franks, Alemanni and Bavarians during the Merovingian period from the middle of the 6th century AD as decorative pendants on women's clothing.

The historical model has a diameter of 8.4 cm, while the brooch has been reduced to about half that size at 4.5 cm.

You can purchase the brooch in high-quality bronze or in genuine silver-plated.
Alternatively, you can also order it in 925 sterling silver (please note the delivery time).

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Many Germanic decorative discs from the Merovingian period feature abstract, geometric patterns in a symmetrical arrangement, mostly reminiscent of a spinning sun wheel, sometimes with zoomorphic motifs or animal heads in the Germanic Animal Style I, reminiscent of snakes or bird heads.

There is no evidence of a religiously connoted sun cult among the mostly Christian Germanic peoples of the Merovingian period. The sun wheel pendants were therefore probably understood as symbolic decorative objects, which were assigned an apotropaic (protective) meaning and continued traditional, pre-Christian pictorial motifs.

In the Merovingian period, pagan symbolic traditions and Christian influences overlapped. The sun wheel motifs can therefore be understood as part of an iconographic continuity that dates back to pre-Christian times and was reinterpreted in early medieval arts and crafts.