Justifiable Defiance is the name of today’s game. I defy you to tell
me this is not jewelry. I justify my statement via an argument so
lucid as to cause the very sun to pale in the spirit of
acquiescence. Ready?
It’s a solid sheet of gold dating back to around 1900 to 1600 BC.
You wear it. Gold. Wear. Ego jewelry. Do I hear the thundering roll
of a drum beat? It was brought into existence during the European
Bronze age and it was found inside a burial mound in a field called
Bryn yr Ellyllon (the Goblins’ Hill) at Mold, in Flintshire, Wales,
in 1933. It was buried draped upon the body of a person–presumably
of the female persuasion–inside the mound upon the field.
The breadth of this doo-dad is a tad over 18 inches and was designed
to fit a petite person gender unknown except by extrapolation and in
consideration of the fact that similar nearby graves contained
women.
As it happens not only am I going to show you an image of the cape
but I am also–out of the extreme nobility of my heart–going to
show it to you draped upon the bod of an attractively petite young
thang.
You think we make pretty jewelry today? This cape dates back to
pre-historic times when all the jewelers of the day had to work with
were some metal shards a handful of tiger claws and a scant amount
of tempered gorilla skulls. Well maybe they had more but
metaphorically speaking I’m right on target. I’d like to see today’s
jewelers make one of these.
Using the aforementioned gorilla skull–or some such similar
implement–the craftsman of the day would beat the crap out of a
single ingot of gold thereby forming said cape which took quite a
bit of time and skill and then subsequently decorated it with
repouss? concentric designs. So immaculate was the design that
barely a micron of plain gold remained visible.
Look closely and you will note that the cape extends well along the
upper body restricting arm movement to only that area below the
elbow. One concludes at this point that the cape was used only for
ceremonial purposes and was therefore surely used by a priest or
priestess with spiritual powers. It was most certainly not suited
for a prehistoric game of ping pong–a game at which–modestly
speaking I ain’t no slouch.
There may be some of you who–when viewing this cape–might notice
repair lines spread randomly hither and thither in haphazard fashion
along the body of the material. This is due to the fact that the
above said cape was originally found in fragments and as the years
passed the fragments were recovered and reunited with the original
whole to which they once belonged.
There’s more but okay. The end. You know the rest. The visit to the
image… also known as the viewing experience. You know where. Home
page. http://www.tyler-adam.com. Scroll down. Left side. Tidbits.
Click. And there for your sensory optic pleasure you will see an
image of the Mold Gold Cape of Flintshire.
And there ya have it.
That’s it for this week folks.
Catch you all next week.
Benjamin Mark