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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: 37.5mm; width: 18mm; thickness: 2mm; weight: 2.2g). At the top of the artefact, there is a rectangular suspension/ attachment loop. This is integrally connected to the main openwork and decorated central body of the artefact, which is circular in plan and flat in side section. The central body has a slightly incomplete decorated outer border (thickness: 1mm) with the remains of small protrusions evenly spaced (approximately 5mm apart) along the outside edge where a series of arches within the outer border meet the outside edge. In between the outside and inner borders (diameter of outside border: 18mm; diameter of inside border: 9.5mm), there are seven openwork arches. Within the inner border (thickness: 1mm), there is a central single and openworked fleur de lys, which faces towards the incomplete hook at one end of the artefact. Immediately beneath the main circular body of the artefact and at the top of the hook, there is a collar comprised of two ribs running widthwise. The incomplete and integral cast copper alloy hook (length: 13.5mm; width at collar: 5mm; thickness at collar: 2mm) breaks above where the hook would have originally curled round to the back of the artefact. The back of the dress hook is flat and undecorated and, overall, the dress hook is in a slightly worn but 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). | 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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