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Description: | Copper alloy die stamp fragment. Corner of a rectangular die stamp bearing an ovoid panel, part of its neighbouring panel, and curvilinear tendrils framing these. The panels are filled with neatly executed reticulate cross hatch, and the scheme is limited by straight borders meeting at right angles. The object bears a curious resemblance to a fragment broken from a printing plate - a variety of find occasionally reported from Northern Lincolnshire, a rural provenance for which the reason is obscure. A metal lip projects from both the straight edges of the panel, and, as the decoration of the reverse of the plate makes clear, the plate continued beyond these borders.The flat plain back of the plate is also decorated, but in an altogether more casual style. Two elements infilled with a cruder, wider and mainly un-ruled cross hatch are separated by a blank field. The transition, however, is defined by strongly ruled lines. Curving lines beyond the narrow decorated field appear to be part of a more extensive figurative scheme. These have deeply incised borders and more lightly incised curvilinear internal features, the latter enclosing elements hatched by diagonal strokes. This decoration was carried right up to the extant edges of the plate, which indicates that the borders on the 'obverse' were internal to a larger scheme and that the edges of the plate lay beyond them.Both sides bear curvilinear and cross-hatched decoration, but the obverse is deftly executed while the 'reverse' appears naïve, casual and untidy in its execution, almost as a pastiche of its 'obverse'.Suggested date (covering both episodes): possibly Medieval, 1270-1350.Length: 21.5mm, Width: 22.6mm, Thickness: 1.9mm, Weight: 3.97gms.
Original Image | Publisher: | http://finds.org.uk | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Identifier: | https://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/ | Go to resource |
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