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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: 17.5mm; width: 16mm; thickness: 2.5mm; weight: 1.3g). At the top of the artefact, there is a trapezoidal suspension/ attachment loop. This is integrally connected to an incomplete (due to a break) decorated central body, which is circular in plan and mostly flat in side section. The central body has an incomplete decorated outer border (thickness: 1mm) comprised of approximately thirteen visible minute pellets that run down from either side of the outside arm of the suspension/ attachment loop to a break at the bottom of the central body. A second incomplete pellet border (thickness: 2mm) also separates the outside border from the central decoration by a single line of eleven visible 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 a result of the break at the bottom of the central body, the hook that normally extends from underneath the central body is completely missing. 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 worn but fair condition with a light 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-A54516), as well as another associated dress hook from the same findspot (WMID-A4E640). | Format: | text/html | License: | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ | Publisher: | The Portable Antiquities Scheme | Rights holder: | The Portable Antiquities Scheme | Subjects: | archaeology | Temporal: | 1600
1700 | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Identifier: | http://www.finds.org.uk/database/artefac... | Language: | en-GB | Format: | text/html | Go to resource |
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