5th-7th century AD. An iron folding campaign stool frame of Nocera Umbra variant type with balustered legs, top and base; wider sections to the ends inlaid with bronze repeating pattern of scrolls, at point where frame narrows three horizontal bands with Greek key meander and chevron pattern below with iron stud hinging two frames together; to the upper surface of the frame a repeating swastika pattern with wave border to the top; three horizontal lines where the frame narrows, decorated with chevron pattern. See Emery, V.B., The Royal tombs of Ballana, Cairo, 1938; Waldbaum, J.C., Metalwork from Sardis: the finds through 1974, Sardis Monograph, Cambridge, 1984; Arena, M.S., Umbria Longobarda, la necropoli di Nocera Umbra nel centenario della scoperta, Roma, 1997, pp. 124-126; Miks, C., ‘Relikte eines Fruhmittelalterlichen Oberschichtgrabes?,’ in Jahrbuch des RGZM, 2009, 56, pp.396-538, in particular pp. 434ff, for similar examples.7 kg, 65cm (25 1/2"). Property of an English collector; acquired in the UK in the 1990s; accompanied by an archaeological report by military specialist Dr. Raffaele D’Amato; this lot has been checked against the Interpol Database of stolen works of art and is accompanied by AIAD certificate number no.10403-170290. These richly decorated folding chairs, so-called Sellae Castrenses, stayed in the tradition of old Romano-Italic insignia of the military command. It was especially common in the army and was mainly reserved for the generals. A distinction has to be made between the rather rare surviving specimens of Roman metallic chairs whose S-shaped curved frame recall elements of the sella curulis - i.e. the seat of Roman magistrates - and those with straightforward elements that correspond to the sella castrensis, a chair used by senior military personnel in Rome and Byzantium, already mentioned in use by emperors and generals in the classical Empire (Suetonius, Galba, 18").