The Roscrea brooch is a 9th-century Celtic brooch of the pseudo-penannular type, found at or near Roscrea, County Tipperary, Ireland, before 1829. It is made from cast silver, and decorated with zoomorphic patterns of open-jawed animals and gilded gold filigree, and is 9.5 cm in height and 8.3 cm wide. The silver is of an unusually high quality for Irish metalwork of the period, indicating that its craftsmen were both trading materials with settled Vikings, who had first, traumatically, invaded the island in the preceding century, and had absorbed elements of the Scandinavian's imagery and metalwork techniques.
Front view
The similar Tara Brooch, 710–750 AD
Roscrea Brooch, details
George Petrie (1790–1866). Portrait by Bernard Mulrenin
The Celtic brooch, more properly called the penannular brooch, and its closely related type, the pseudo-penannular brooch, are types of brooch clothes fasteners, often rather large; penannular means formed as an incomplete ring. They are especially associated with the beginning of the Early Medieval period in Ireland and Britain, although they are found in other times and places—for example, forming part of traditional female dress in areas in modern North Africa.
The pseudo-penannular Tara Brooch, the most ornate of all, also decorated on the back (see below). Irish, early 8th century.
Viking period brooch in silver from the Penrith Hoard
The Rogart Brooch, National Museums of Scotland, FC2. Pictish penannular brooch, 8th century. Silver with gilding and glass. Classified as Fowler H3 type.
Bronze zoomorphic penannular brooch, Co. Antrim, 6th century AD. The Hunt Museum (Limerick, Ireland).
