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Description: | An incomplete cast copper alloy dress hook/ clothes fastener, dating to the Post Medieval period, between AD 1600 - 1700 (length: 27.5mm; width: 16mm; thickness: 3mm; weight: 2.2g).At the top of the artefact, there is a trapezoidal suspension/ attachment loop. This is integrally connected to a decorated central body, which is circular in plan and mostly flat in side section. The central body has a decorated outer border (thickness: 1mm) comprised of approximately seventeen minute pellets that run down from either side of the outside arm of the suspension/ attachment loop to the incomplete hook in the centre below the main body. A second pellet border (thickness: 2mm) also separates the outside border from the central decoration by a single line of sixteen pellets that run around the circumference of the main body, including two pellets present between the arms of the suspension/ attachment loop. Within these pellet borders, there is a single linear and circular ridge (thickness: 0.5mm) surrounding what appears to be a possible protruding central face. As previously mentioned, there is an incomplete hook integrally attached and centrally protruding below the main body of the dress hook (length: 7.5mm), which is broken before the hook would have originally curved backwards behind the artefact. The back of the dress hook mostly flat (although there is a slight recess in the centre where the possible protruding head appears on the opposing side) and undecorated. Overall, the artefact is in a slightly worn and fair condition with a dark green patina.In the publication 'Norwich Households: Medieval and Post-Medieval Finds from the Norwich Survey Excavations 1971-78', 1993 (page 17), Margeson states that the dress hook or hooked tag 'seems to have undergone a revival in the 16th century, when cast, highly decorated and often openwork examples were popular. They, like their Saxon equivalents, were clearly used for a variety of purposes associated with clothes fastening and accessories'. From material excavated in Amsterdam, some of these tags were 'used at each end of a decorative chain, perhaps for fastening a cloak. The sharp hooks were probably used with cords or hooked straight into the material, rather than with "eyes". The examples from Amsterdam come from late 16th/ early 17th-century contexts' (page 17).An identical example from the same findspot has been recorded on the PAS database (WMID-A583F3), as well as another associated dress hook from the same findspot (WMID-A4E640).
Original Image | Publisher: | http://finds.org.uk | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Identifier: | http://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/r... | Go to resource |
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