An ancient Celtic brooch, known as a fibula, with some very light remnants of gold decoration, geometric designs and a pin (although, I'm suspicious of the pin, since the spring didn't survive).
This brooch is from a Celtiberian collection of artifacts. It is made of bronze. It measures approximately 39.2 mm in diameter, and 22.1 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 parallel lines mid-way up.
At the top of the bow, there is either an odd corrosion color, or the remnants of a dark red paint.
At the upper turn of the bow, on the side that the pin lands on, there are some very light flakes of gold that sparkle when hit with light. You can barely see them in the picture, which is the same as in real life.
Where the bow hits the round base, there are geometric patterns on the side where the spring would have been.
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 -
The pin is glued in, and I'm suspicious of how real it is since the spring didn't survive in any form. There is some green corrosion; only flecks of the (presumed) paint remain. On the base, there are remnants of glue from where it was mounted to the collection. Also, on the bottom of the base, someone wrote a location on it, but I can't read it.