Featured Antique Etiquette

Hi - no idea where to ask this question, so I’ll start here. I am not an antique ‘person’ so forgive my ignorant tone.

I have acquired a very nice c800 Anglo Saxon silver strap end. It’s nicely preserved and has perfect rivet holes.

My wife is a historian with a penchant for the period, and I wanted to get a professional jeweller to mount the strap end into a necklace / pendant for her via the rivet holes. Now comes the etiquette question... Are those of you who are reading this who know about such things gasping in horror at this idea?

Should these kind of things be kept as museum / display pieces / in collections, and is trying to make something of this in some other way scoffed at, or is this kind of ok? I don’t want to appear to be an antique muppet as it were

appreciate any feedback!

 

What does your wife think? It would probably be a good thing if you didn’t have to damage the strap end in any way to make it into a necklace ie using any holes already present as you say. Is it a very rare example? That would make a difference.

 

I think you're a very thoughtful husband, and for me, so long as the piece isn't altered when adapting to a pendant, would love to have something like you suggest...

~Cheryl

 

It’s supposed to be a present one way or another, so garnering her opinion might spoil the surprise! The item has nice rivet holes already, so no damage should occur (with luck)

 

Show us a photo of the piece,it might help.

 

Ah right. I see what you mean. Is it similar to this one?

 

Very similar

 

Why not make a chastity belt instead?

 

Are you thinking to just add two rings and then attach chains? They would be easy to remove in the future if wanted.
I haven’t been able to see any others online made into necklaces but I would think it would look pretty good.

 

What a lovely idea, Richard.

I agree, that's what I would do. I wouldn't find it a problem at all, as long as the piece remains intact, so no soldering either.

 

Just adding rings and chains would be cheaper. There’s these mounts but I don’t know if this sort of mount work would damage the piece.

 

I was going to ask the jeweller what she could do to be most sympathetic, certainly with a view to later removal. More down to not appearing to trivialise a 1200 yr old artifact.

 

Have a silicon mold made and cast a replica.

 

Hoping to go for something slightly classier than that, but that’s the idea. Just silver loops and a simple silver chain I think

 

If it has the two holes. I might just run piece of satin rat-tail through them and call it solved. The satin cording can't do any damage to the strap end. OTOH, check to make sure it's not some rare example first.

 

Sounds like a great idea... time to start googling on that!

 

I’m pretty sure it’s a nice example of, but fairly standard find. Sometimes I find it hard to get my head around the fact someone made and used it so long ago!

 

.... and would probably look at you cockeyed when you said you wanted to use a strap end as a necklace.

 

Probably just after I convinced them not to kill, enslave, eat or screw me