The Scheme's Logo
The scheme's full working name is "The Portable Antiquities Scheme", sometimes shortened to PAS.
The design of our logo, incorporates a Saxon brooch from Eastry in Kent. This beautiful example can be found, registered on our database as:
A more complete version (but stylistically different) was found at Lympne and recorded as KENT4837.
The story behind the discovery of the brooch is quite revealing.
Whilst filming near Eastry as part of a television programme on metal-detecting called ‘Pastfinders', Alan Elliott of the White Cliffs Metal Detecting Club found part of what he at first thought was a piece of Victorian jewellery. On closer inspection, however, it proved to be part of the front plate of an early seventh century Anglo-Saxon plated disc brooch. The brooch is gold, decorated with gold cells set with garnets and blue glass, and some extremely delicate gold filigree work. Unfortunately it is very badly damaged, but it would clearly have been a very high quality piece of jewellery when complete. It was probably made at Faversham, which appears to have been established as a high status craft centre, perhaps under the patronage of the Kentish royal house, in the second quarter of the sixth century.
When the gold brooch fragment was shown to the landowners, they remarked that they had a similar item in their cupboard. This was duly produced and turned out to be two parts of a gilt silver Kentish disc brooch. This had been found by a metal- detectorist on the same field as the gold example, about 15 years previously, and again had been mistaken as Victorian. Typologically it is slightly earlier in the sequence of high status Kentish jewellery than the plated disc brooch, and was probably manufactured during the last decade of the sixth century, again probably at Faversham.
The logo has been stylised slightly,as it does not show how the brooch would originally look. The relocation of the smaller fragment, is slightly out by approximately 25 degrees, and moved slightly to the left and should really look like the image below. The two images, demonstrate the difference in the way the brooch should look and how we have used it.
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| Stylised brooch as seen in the logo | Possible locational reconstruction of the brooch |
Our logo comes in print and web formats as found in the logo kit available below:
Download our logokit 1.2 MB
Our logos should only be used as an image file. Please do not attempt to reproduce our logo using any fonts other than those supplied as the image.
If you need to reproduce our logo for a document or publication, download the logo kit zip file above.
If you right click and save a copy of the website logo itself, then image quality will not be of high enough resolution for press or print purposes. Please note that use of these logos in your publication should be cleared with our Central Unit.
Please contact Daniel Pett at dpett@british-museum.ac.uk for further information and to arrange permission. Included within this logo kit, is a website link image. Alternatively, copy and paste this HTML code reprinted below into your HTML.
<a href="http://www.finds.org.uk" title="Go to the finds website"><img src="http://www.finds.org.uk/images/logos/pasrgbsize5.gif" alt="Portable Antiquities Scheme" width="139" height="68"></a>
This will produce a button as reproduced below, and if you click on this, you will see the result.
