It measures roughly 1.9 metres long and 1.3 metres wide, and it is composed of the kind of careful, deliberate basketry construction that takes skill to produce, even in miniature. What makes it remarkable is what it once formed part of: in all likelihood, a peatland platform, a structure built from interwoven rods and heavier upright stakes, known as sails, laid down into boggy ground to create a stable working or walking surface in terrain that would otherwise be impassable.

The panel is oriented roughly east-northeast to west-southwest, and the rods used in its construction range from around two to three centimetres in diameter, with the sails somewhat thicker at four to five centimetres. These proportions are consistent with hurdle construction, a technique used across prehistoric and early medieval Ireland to build everything from animal enclosures to causeways and platforms at the edges of lakes or wetlands. Crucially, toolmarks were noted at the ends of the rods, meaning the wood was cut and shaped deliberately, not simply gathered as windfall. That small detail transforms the object from a curiosity into evidence of a person at work, someone who sat down with a blade and prepared timber for a specific purpose, in a specific place, at some point now lost to us without further dating evidence.