York Castle Museum

Jewellery Making

The expertise of three Yorkshire jewellers gave us much more insight into the workmanship behind some of the greatest treasures in our museum.

We invited the jewellers in to examine in detail how these beautiful objects were made.

The Viking gold arm ring

The medieval Middleham Jewel, pictured above, is one of our most well-known treasures and is a gold pendant adorned with an oblong sapphire, engraved with images of the Trinity on the front and the Nativity on the back. Our jewellers’ verdict was that the quality of the engraving was fantastic, but the basic workmanship used in making the ‘box’ was less impressive.

They also looked at the Middleham Ring, dating from the same period, which is decorated on the outside with a continuous band of 12 letter ‘S’s. The jewellers explained how it would have been enamelled to make the ‘S’s stand out.

Detail from one of the six Anglo Saxon strap ends

We found out that our stunning gold Viking arm ring would have been made by forging two bars of gold and twisting them together, the joins hidden by using a decorated piece of wire.

The jewellers were most impressed by the workmanship involved in creating our six Anglo Saxon strap ends, which are intricately engraved, each one slightly different to the rest.

We are grateful for the help of Pamela Dickinson, Sarah Chilia and Robert Feather in this project.

Photo of Middleham Jewel taken by Joel Chester Fildes