Description
The Berlin gold hat is a 490 g gold hat with a long and slender conical shaft and a differentiated convex foot, decorated all over with traced motifs, applied with small stamps and wheels. Its composition is very similar to the previously known Golden Cone of Ezelsdorf-Buch.
At the bottom of the cone, the sheet gold of the Berlin hat is reinforced by a 10 mm wide ring of sheet bronze. The external edge of the brim is strengthened by a twisted square-sectioned wire, around which the gold leaf is turned upwards.
The overall height is 745 mm. The hat was hammered from a gold alloy of 87.7% Au, 9.8% Ag, 0.4% Cu and 0.1% Sn. It was made of a single piece; its average thickness is 0.6 mm. The cone is ornamented with 21 zones of horizontal bands and rows of symbols along all of its length. Fourteen different stamps and three decorated wheels or cylindrical-stamps were used. The horizontal bands were decorated systematically with repeated similar patterns.
The individual ornamental bands were optically separated traced ribs and bulges, mostly achieved with the use of cylindrical stamps. The bands of ornaments contain mostly buckle and circle motifs, most with a circular central buckle surrounded by up to six concentric circles.
One of the bands is distinctive: It is decorated with a row of recumbent crescents, each atop an almond- or eye-shaped symbol. The point of the cone is embellished with an eight-spoke star on a background of decorative punches.
An overview of the type and number of stamps used in the ornamental zones is shown on the right.
The meeting of the shaft with the foot is taken up by a wide vertically ribbed band. The foot is decorated with similar motifs to the cone itself. Near the reinforcing bronze band, it turns into a brim, also decorated with disk-shaped symbols.
Read more about this topic: Berlin Gold Hat
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“It [Egypt] has more wonders in it than any other country in the world and provides more works that defy description than any other place.”
—Herodotus (c. 484–424 B.C.)
“As they are not seen on their way down the streams, it is thought by fishermen that they never return, but waste away and die, clinging to rocks and stumps of trees for an indefinite period; a tragic feature in the scenery of the river bottoms worthy to be remembered with Shakespeare’s description of the sea-floor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Why does philosophy use concepts and why does faith use symbols if both try to express the same ultimate? The answer, of course, is that the relation to the ultimate is not the same in each case. The philosophical relation is in principle a detached description of the basic structure in which the ultimate manifests itself. The relation of faith is in principle an involved expression of concern about the meaning of the ultimate for the faithful.”
—Paul Tillich (1886–1965)