English: A gold and enamel mount, now crushed and incomplete. A solid rim supports a sheet-gold dome, which is covered with coloured enamels set in gold cloisons. Blue, green, white, and yellow enamel is preserved and there is one dark-coloured cell, possibly inlaid with a garnet or a piece of red glass. The enamel is arranged in pelta form and the top of the dome is taken up by a circle with an inscribed quatrefoil inside a star. Non-destructive X-ray fluorescence analysis of the surface indicated a gold composition of 92-96%, and silver content of 3-5%, the remainder being copper. The enamels were opacified with antimony rather than tin, which supports a late Anglo-Saxon date (Susan La Niece, pers. comm.).

The function of this stud is unclear. The rim clearly shows that the object was hollow and had no base; it may have been a decorative mount with an organic backing. The colour palette of the enamels is similar to that found on other probable 9th to 11th-century enamelwork known from Anglo-Saxon England. Examples are a small stud from the Eye Area (TAR 2004: no. 106), a gold stud now in the British Museum's collection (P&E 2007, 8049.1) or the Alfred and Minster Lovell jewels in the Ashmolean Museum (Hinton 2008). Notably, however, none of these objects contains any yellow enamel; the yellow enamel on the Cholsey stud is very unusual. The size and domed design suggests that it may be the button from a dagger or sword (the button is the rounded, decorative stop to a sword or dagger situated above the pommel).