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Description: | An Early Post-Medieval (1500-1700) copper alloy sword belt fitting, consisting of a hooked plate which would have been one of three suspended from a larger mount. The hook is zoomorphic and rather bent to one side. The plate retains its two corroded rivets. Measures 48.15x(max)21.32x16.09mm and weighs 10.50g.The plate (c.2.4mm thick) has moulded decoration, some of which is rather worn. The end opposite to the hook is tripartite (max.width, 21.32mm), and apparently represents a bud between two leaves. The bud has moulded pellets flanking its curved edge and a moulded flower between two leaves below. Underneath this is a corroded iron rivet obscuring some detail, but two diagonal lines extend into the outer 'leaves' of the tripartite end.Below the plate is rather more triangular in shape, narrowing from 18.23mm to 11.48mm and depicting a central stem with two curlicues bending inwards to touch it, foliate decoration around and moulded diagonal ribs flanking the outside edge of the plate. At the base is another corroded iron rivet, again obscuring some detail, and below this two knops extend to either side with a width of 16.41mm.The hook is rectangular in cross-section below the plate (5.3x3.8mm), becoming circular in cross-section and terminating in an animal head with prominent brow ridge and open jaws.Sword belt fittings are rarely found complete (with all four components), rather elements or broken examples are far more common. An illustration of another complete sword-belt fitting can be found in Read (2001, 43; fig. 26, ref. 373). Such fittings 'proliferate in the 16th and 17th centuries' (Geake 2001, 35). Their design and decoration are relatively standardised.
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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