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Description: | A largely complete hook-piece from a copper-alloy post-medieval book-clasp. The artefact is now corroded and bent, having received a heavy strike to its lower surface in the past. It is sub-rectangular in shape, with a flared attachment end. At the opposite end is a curved hook (10.2mm wide). Below this the main body of the clasp is 22.1mm in width, narrowing to 20.1mm after 21.3mm, finally flaring to a maximum of 30.2mm at the attachment end. At the attachment end the are four small triangular removals which help define its shape. Part of one of the terminal lobes (the left) is missing as a result of old damage. The object is slightly bevelled on its longer edges.
On the upper surface the field is decorated in a number of ways. Below the hook is a pair of transverse incisions with incised zigzags between them. Beyond this the field within the slightly wider section described above is decorated with double incised diagonals travelling top left to bottom right when viewing the object with the hook uppermost. As the clasp narrows there is a row of fine longitudinal incisions of varying lengths. Broadly, they are longer at the edges and in the centre, giving the impression of a pair of triangular indentations within them. Many of them creep into the wider field described above, perhaps witness to the haste with which they were scored. At the flared attachment end is a pair of punched ring and dot motifs. These are slightly misaligned on the longitudinal plane and surround rivet holes. Emerging from the rivet holes, and over stamped by the concentric circles, is a 'pheon' motif of three slightly diverging lines. At 27.5mm up from the attachment end is another rivet hole, again surrounded by a punched ring-and-dot motif. A fourth rivet hole can be found just off-centre, just within the slightly wider element at the hook end.
Book-claps bearing similar decorative motifs (punched ring and dot, the incised 'pheons') can be found illustrated in Crummy (1998, 68). These examples are given a 17th-century date. This artefact has a dark red-brown colour with dustings of dark green corrosion product. This patina has been broken through by a couple of recent diagonal strikes to the upper surface to the left of the lefthand 'pheon'. | Subjects: | hook-piece clasp | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Creator: | Webley, Robert - Portable Antiquities Scheme | Identifier: | http://www.findsdatabase.org.uk/hms/pas_... | Language: | en-GB | Go to resource |
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