Brooch in the Form of a Six-Pointed Star (late 700s-early 800s): Art, History and Details

Brooch in the Form of a Six-Pointed Star (late 700s-early 800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Women used brooches like this to fasten their veils beneath the chin. Its rare form--a hexagram--suggests that it also functioned as a talisman or amulet to attract good luck and to ward off evil.

Object facts

• Title: Brooch in the Form of a Six-Pointed Star
• Date: late 700s-early 800s
• Culture: Frankish, early Carolingian, late 8th century - early 9th century
• Type: Metalwork
• Technique: gold with repoussé and filigree decoration; copper backplate
• Dimensions: Diameter: 7.7 cm (3 1/16 in.)
• Collection: MED - Migration Period
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 2009.344

A detail from the museum

Look carefully at this brooch and notice a small animal, perhaps a dragon, camouflaged amid the swirling whirls of gold.

Collection credit

Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Fliegel, Stephen N. "Movable Pieces." Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 50, no. 4 (July/August 2010): 24-25.
• Cleveland Museum of Art. The CMA Companion: A Guide to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2014.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.