An ancient Celtic brooch, known as a fibula, with geometric designs and a spring (although, I'm suspicious of the spring, since it's quite.... well preserved). The brooch is broken, and tacked together with acid-free pva glue that's easy to peal away. Price reflects condition.
This brooch is from a Celtiberian collection of artifacts. It is made of bronze. It measures approximately 47.5 mm in diameter, and 22 mm tall.
This brooch is an interesting mix of styles, indicative of the Iberian peninsula's position between two cultures. If you search more northerly Celtic brooches (of the time), you'll find examples of round brooches. If you search for Etruscan brooches (Pre-Roman Italy) you'll find brooches with bows that look like leaches. The Celtiberians married these two styles into a leach-like brooch, with a round base; the merged style is unique to the region and helps to identify where the fibula was created.
Decoration -
There are a number of design elements:
On each side of the bow there are horizontal and diagonal parallel lines mid-way up.
At the top of the bow, there is either an odd corrosion color, or the remnants of a base.
At the upper turn of the bow, on the side that the spring, there are some is a flake or two of gold color. You can barely see them in the picture, which is the same as in real life. They do appear to be on top of the base color, so I believe this brooch was once gold in color; I thought the gold coloring was simply a rub revealing bronze underneath, but when you look close you realize it's on top of all the other layers.
Where the bow hits the round base, there is vertical design on the side where the spring is.
Provenance -
We bought a collection of artifacts at auction in Switzerland (La Galerie Numismatique, September 28th, 2024); we are researching each object and offering them for sale individually. You can see the collection in the pictures we posted.
In the course of our investigation, we found that the artifacts had several names of places in the Celtiberian region written on them, for example "Salienca". Also, the brooch design was unique to the Celtiberians (Google search "Celtiberian Fibula" to see similar examples). We've come to the conclusion that the collection is specific to the Celtiberian era/region.
Wikipedia tells us the Celtiberians "were a group of Celts and Celticized peoples inhabiting an area in the central-northeastern Iberian Peninsula during the final centuries of the BC. They were explicitly mentioned as being Celts by several classic authors (e.g. Strabo)."
Condition -
There is no pin.
The spring is in suspiciously good condition.
There is corrosion and rubbing to the piece.
The brooch is broken in several spots, and glued together. Presumably, it was found in the ground as such.
On the bottom there are glue remnants from where it was glued into the collection.