(artist(s) unknown, attributed to Suffolk, England) (e.7th century). Sutton Hoo burial ship purse cover [gold, garnet, millefiore enamel]. The British Museum, London.

This is a strictly symmetrical work of objective abstraction that favors organization in every expressive manner. Rectilinear forms frame the composition, which is effectively two registers. They contrast in their formal relationship to nature: The top is purely geometric, the lower creatures and figures. The lower register, due to the interactions, carries the most expressive and interest-generating energy of this composition. The central figures seem to be waterfowl mounted or attacked by a Swedish hawk. They are bracketed by crouching front-view people being attacked by wolf-like creatures, also in profile. A graceful interplay of rigid and curvilinear edges is distributed throughout.

I believe the use of beasts, animals and people in vaguely conflicting interactions is a simple expression of the culture from which it came, similar to the concise, crisply-defined logotypes and signatures that are popular in American media today. Both are effortless works of design to their respective cultures. One detail that makes this work quite different from almost all work I can identify is the subordination of value. Chromatic color carries much more expressive weight, dominated by crimsons and midtones, and accented by an exquisite distribution of tinted royal blues. When the form-defining golds are incorporated, as they should be, a primary triadic color scheme is revealed.

When edges are defined by line, generally they express a difference between a surface and the space around it. In this case, similar to the radiant stained-glass expressive accomplishments of the French Gothic era, thick strokes define adjacent forms in this work. This shared-edge gestalt is primarily responsible for this works planar depth. Pictorial balance is quite static, but there are a number of subtle sources of interest in this work, including tensions generated between small and minuscule forms, reds versus golds and middling versus light tones (consistent with color).