What kind of brooch is this?

[Unitedstatesofamerica1]

 

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[relic-raiser]

Don't know about the brooch, but the animal looks like a griffin.

 

[yaxthri]

Reminds me of antique scythian jewelry, I'd say this is supposed to be a dear. It's a repro no doubt whatever it is.

 

[Subterranean]

Buck with antlers is standing behind the doe in the front. Appears of Mediterranean or Middle Eastern origin to me...best of luck. Sub

 

[Back-of-the-boat]

Might be trying to represent a Caribou.

 

[CaperBoy]

Kind of looks like West Coast Haida Indian design. At least the head and antlers anyway. I'm with "Back of the Boat" on a caribou.

 

[artemis moon]

reminds me of ancient Assyrian art

 

[Red-Coat]

Just tidying up some blasts from the past (including some very ancient ones), largely for the benefit of anyone searching the site for information.

Neat. It is indeed a reproduction of a Scythian gold “stag and griffin” decoration. These had tiny loops on the back for sewing them onto fabric (probably tunics). It looks to be copied from one of those in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (although Philadelphia has similar ones and so too does the Staatliche Museum in Berlin, all acquired from the same source) and it might be a museum shop reproduction.

The provenance and provenience of the originals isn’t known for certain, but they’re from a large group of items known as the “Maikop treasure” alleged by the Armenian dealer who sold them in 1913 to have been found by a Russian farmer in 1912 on his land at Maikop, in the Kuban River region at the eastern end of the Black Sea. Perhaps at least some of the items have that provenance, but the size and diversity of the collection suggests it most likely came from multiple royal graves in that general region dating to the 4th and 5th Centuries BC.