And then I fell head-over-heels for some EUR180 cufflinks

[kaberett]

The Nebra Sky Disc is very, very cool. I'm going to summarise for you what is on that there Wikipedia page (which, incidentally, has been very endearingly translated by a German-speaker), but: basically, it was discovered in Germany by people illegally using metal detectors, spent two years changing hands on the black market, and was then recovered by the state in a police sting operation. It's reckoned to be about 3,600 years old.

It's made of bronze and of gold. The copper is from Bischofshofen, in Salzburgerland in Austria; the tin and gold are both from the river Carnon in Cornwall.

I saw the official reproduction in the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth, when I was visiting my grandfather at the beginning of May. The museum was sadly not selling anything with the design on; given the localities involved and the history and the science, it's the kind of thing I adore, so I was very disappointed.

And then my mother and I finally got around to looking in the online museum shop for Landesmuseum Halle. If you click through to Schmuck and search the page for Mannschaftknöpfe, you will find what it is I am drooling over. [link updated 09/01/2021]

Which is rather inconvenient, really.

Comments

[jamfish]

oh my gosh, that's lovely. (...and now I covet the watches. ...thanks.)

[noldo]

took me this long to figure out it wasn't a petri dish

but now that I've figured it out, very nice

[karohemd]

I saw a documentary (part of a series, you can watch this from the UK (at 30 minuts in), unlike iplayer which you can't watch outside the UK) on the Himmelsscheibe a couple of weeks ago. Its history is really quite bizarre. Around the time it was buried there was a huge volcanic eruption that darkened the sky and due to the lack of sunlight made crops fail. The people took this as a sign that the gods (it was a sun cult) had abandoned them and got rid of the now useless tool.

I am very envious of those cufflinks (Manschettenknöpfe, not Mannschaftknöpfe)!