Dragonesque brooch

[3] They have the form of a double-headed animal with a thin, flat S-shaped body, a head at each end, "large upstanding ears, and a curled snout", and a pin allowing them to be used for fastening clothes.

They are in cast bronze (or at least a copper alloy),[5] and about two-thirds feature decoration in vitreous enamel,[6] now often mostly fallen away, which was a speciality of the pre-conquest Celtic art of Britain.

[14] The northern area where they are found, called Brigantia, was then the home of Britain's largest tribal confederation, the Brigantes, and some writers have connected them to the manufacture of the brooches, even attempting more precise localization.

[17] Other types of Romano-British brooch with Celtic stylistic elements were popular in military contexts in the frontier area;[18] the Staffordshire Moorlands Pan is the best survival of a small group of larger trullae with Celtic-style enamel, and the names of forts on Hadrian's Wall in Latin, presumed to be soldiers' souvenirs.

[21] The champleve enamel decoration includes the full range of colours known at the time (more than in pre-conquest Celtic work), and the ornamental style is essentially Roman, with squares and lozenge shapes prominent.

Large pieces of elite metalwork, with superb technical and artistic skill, like the gold Great Torc from Snettisham of about 70 BC, are no longer found.