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Description: | Post medieval cast lead alloy hooked tag. Only the attachment loop and upper part of the plate survives, the lower part and the hook is missing to an old break. The plate is formed of two hemispherical conjoined bosses with the break and parallels suggesting there was originally a third arranged in a triangle. Each boss has the remains of a ragged edged border around the base formed of a ring of slightly flattened pellets. The bosses are decorated with three plain rings arranged in a triangle with a pellet in the centre of each ring and in the centre between the rings. From the back projects a large sub rectangular loop with rounded corners. It is triangular in section but irregular and is now bent up above the top of the front plate. there are also casting lines on the back suggesting a multi-part mould was used. It is 14.3mm long by 15.3mm wide and 5.5mm thick; it weighs 2.58 grams.Lead alloy hooked tags echo the designs seen in the contemporary silver-gilt examples. In general lead alloy is a cheaper material and it's low melting point makes it ideal to cast elaborate and openwork shapes which are harder to copy in copper alloy. It is however weaker than the other materials and it is not clear how practical such a hooked tag would be; particularly with a lead alloy hook. As finds lead alloy examples are rarer than those in copper alloy and appear rarer than those in silver-gilt although this is probably an accident of survival as they are more fragile and often have tin in the alloy which makes them highly friable.Read (2008) illustrates copper alloy and silver-gilt examples which this design copies (p.78-81, no.261-270). The closest example in lead alloy is p.78, no.258. Read classifies these as Class D Type 6 and dates them to the 16th century (ibid: 59). Others on this database include DENO-205E05, NLM-25AF91, DENO-DBB518 and LIN-29C9A7.
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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