1" x 3/4"
Bronze
800 B.C.E (Allegedly)
Collected by Nate Kammerer
“You just got scammed out of forty-five dollars, dude.”
At an antique fair in London, I met an older man behind a table covered in expensive pieces of metal and rock. He was selling arrowheads, small tools, Roman coins, and ancient jewelry. At the very back corner of the table, there was an attractive chunk of corroded metal in a plastic box. The handwritten label read, “BRONZE AGE ZOOMORPHIC HAIR PIN. 800 B.C.E. £35.”
What an incredible deal! On its own, the vaguely rooster-shaped shard might be trash. But sitting next to other larger shards being sold for hundreds of dollars, it seemed like a perfectly reasonable price. In a trustworthy British accent, the old man enthusiastically explained how it would’ve originally topped a long metal pin. I guess the rooster ornament had broken off at some point in the last 2800 years, so he cut me a deal.
My approach to provenance is probably dangerously naive. Sometimes all you can do is believe your object is from Bronze Age England. And maybe I’m just an easy target for an antique forger. A good majority of my friends insist that’s the case, but a few aren’t afraid to believe.