Medieval Censer — Drawing Early Conclusions

My work on a reconstruction effort commenced with very detailed examinations of the piece (utilising two pairs of reading glasses at once!) and then attempts at sketching out what I had theorised from the many clues I'd had at my disposal ~

It was laid upon a sheet of paper and then by carefully tracing around the perimeter with a sharp pencil I created an outline. The central keyhole-shaped window perforation was made by the same means, and then the curved line below it, imagined.

This was thought to have once been a complete semi-circle ~

The full semi-circle was made, a base line drawn across at bottom to represent the base of the upper cup and the basket-hatching within this drawn to entirely fill it.

The remains of a small circular perforation seen at bottom right was also drawn but this made no sense to me because it was off-centre. That it was indeed a hole and not merely a rather regular fracture was confirmed with my powerful eyeglass combination. It had been cast and possessed clear tooling marks that made this certain.

This apparently odd feature completely foxed me at the time...

Next, I drew in the rest of the decoration and as accurately as possible extended the fronds of the plant at left to the baseline. This exercise in such quick sketches was repeated many times until some genuine clarity began to emerge. Eventually, I decided to create a flat plan of the piece as best I could.

Then I had something of a clearer picture…

At middle and to the middle of right is what information I actually have and to the left what I imagine to have been the case. A band of zig-zags (or continuous sinuous line) at the base of the upper cup (and also top of lower cup) are motifs common to many such censers. The fragment possesses zig-zags between the stories of windows and I see no reason why this should not have been repeated below. 

The various perforations were thought to be repeating elements that would have continued around the entire circumference as too were the incised decorative elements.

Reference to other complete censers confirmed this could be the case. Many of the 'globular' type — which by now I suspected this example to have been — are decorated with semi-circular fields on the upper cup and whenever they are, without exception these repeat four times around the entire circumference and meet at the points of the four suspension lugs

Furthermore, in some cases (though not all) the number of 'windows' may be regular because a few of these globular 'pear-shaped' censers seemed in photographs of them, to possess the same quantity...

At least, it was true that there were most often two stories of windows, one above the other. The lower story usually possessing keyhole-shaped perforations, the upper always circular ones. And, when viewed as a photograph it was only possible to see five or six lower windows and four upper windows. I reckoned that perhaps this could mean a total of twelve lower story windows and ten top story windows. 

Without attempting an actual physical reconstruction, I could not tell if this fragment when repeated around a circumference, that as yet I could only guess but not confirm with accuracy, would show such numbers.