A PAIR OF CELT-IBERIAN SILVER FIBULAE, CIRCA 3RD/2ND CENTURY B.C.

South German private collection

Sotheby's, London, December 3rd, 1991, no. 6 (illus.)

Private collection, Cologne, acquired at the above

As their name suggests, the Celt-Iberian peoples were an ethnically Celtic tribe who inhabited an area of north-central Spain in the last few centuries before Christ. Like their Celtic neighbors in the North, they were skilled metal-workers, as is exhibited by these carefully crafted silver fibulae. In the Roman world, fibulae (or brooches) functioned as fastening mechanisms for clothing and varied in levels of adornment from simple, functional pins to intricately conceived artworks like the present examples. For an example of an elaborately rendered silver fibula now in the collection of the Hispanic Society Museum in New York see: http://hispanicsociety.emuseum.com/objects/3558/fibula?ctx=2a6bcc34-b590-4341-b288-414bbe1da94e&idx=5