The extraordinary Anglo-Saxon Alfred Jewel, in gold and rock-crystal, incorporating an enamel plaque bearing an image of a man, was discovered in Somerset in 1693 and is now housed in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. 1/
The bordering text, “AELFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN”, translated as “Alfred ordered me to be made”, suggests a connection with the 9th century reign of Alfred the Great (848-899). It seems generally to be agreed that the object served as a handle for a reading pointer, or aestel. 2/
Alfred is know to have sent out these reading pointers to each bishopric together with a copy of a translation of the Liber Regulae Pastoralis of Pope Gregory the Great (c.540-604). 3/
Several different replicas of the jewel were produced around 1900, the present example being one of those commissioned by the bookseller Elliot Stock (1838-1911) for Elkington of London. 4/
Engravings have been made of the Jewel before 1824, however it is known that the original Jewel was taken apart in the Ashmolean and that this process was possibly undertaken to make the replicas at the turn of the twentieth century and must have been completed by 1906. 5/
It is believed that drawings were made of different aspects of the Jewel and the replicas based on these drawings, hence there is so much variation between the different types of replica. 6/
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