Fuller Brooch

The Fuller Brooch is a piece of late 9th century Anglo-Saxon art of unknown provenance.

It is a large disc made of hammered sheet silver inlaid with black niello and with a diameter of 11.4 cm. Its centre roundel is decorated with personifications of the five senses. In the centre is Sight with large staring oval eyes, surrounded by the other four senses, each in his own compartment. Taste has a hand in his mouth. Smell's hands are behind his back, and he stands between two tall plants. Touch rubs his hands together. Hearing holds his hand to his ear. This is the earliest known representation of the five senses. The outer border consists of 16 small medallions decorated with human, bird, animal and plant motifs.

The brooch has survived in excellent condition, although the pin and its attachments have been removed, and the top of the brooch has been perforated for suspension, and it may be the only surviving piece of secular Anglo-Saxon metalwork to remain unburied since its creation. It was thought to be a fake by Sir Hercules Read, a curator of the British Museum, because of its excellent condition. He advised the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford which had been lent the brooch, to take it off display. It was then bought by Captain A. W. F. Fuller for the price of the silver. After the discovery of the Strickland Brooch, one of the closest correspondences to the Fuller Brooch, also 9th century and in the British Museum, additional research determined that the type of niello used in the Fuller Brooch was used only in the medieval period. In 1952 Capt. Fuller donated the brooch to the British Museum on the condition that it henceforth be called the Fuller Brooch.