Anglo-Saxon bowl hunt

Not everything that is found stays found:

Readers will just have to take it on trust that an ashtray-sized silver bowl, featuring an anxious looking little creature peering up from a tangle of rich Anglo-Saxon ornament, really was "the most remarkable piece of pre-Conquest plate ever found in England", as an expert described it over 150 years ago.

The Witham Bowl was fished out of a river in Lincolnshire in 1816, displayed at an exhibition in Leeds in 1868 - and has never been seen in public since. . .

The Society of Antiquaries of London never owned the bowl, but commissioned [a picture of it] in the 1860s, and then lost it until it turned up in the 1960s in a drawer at its headquarters at Burlington House. It has now put out an international missing water monster alert.

The society has form on losing things: Cromwell's wart, once the pride of the museum, has not been seen since a long dead secretary took to wearing it as a watch fob.

From the Guardian; the BBC also has a writeup which includes a color picture not provided by the Guardian. The Society of Antiquaries website has nothing bowl-related up as yet.

Posted by David on April 21, 2005 3:12 PM