Category Archives: Archaeological Finds

What Size Were Brooches in the Middle Ages – Part 10 – More Medieval vs. Modern Construction Techniques

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Last time I asked, “How could they make cast and formed pieces look heavier than they really are?”

One of the things that I noticed when I first actually handled the pre-1600 artifacts that I own was the extremes that they would go to make it LOOK like the piece was solid and thick.

The biggest tricks that were used involved carefully cast, or formed, pieces of metal, that were riveted together to create hollow structures. Even if a buckle or belt end looks very solid, like the belt end form that was common to both my husband’s belt and one of the artifacts, the originals were actually hollow.

belt end collageThis set of pictures compares my hubby’s belt end, on the left, to the period belt end. The graphic overlay on the right picture shows some common options for the inside piece of the belt end. Remember, the artifact belt end is actually a sandwich of three pieces of metal, two exterior pieces and a center cast piece. The most common form that I have seen for this central piece of metal is a combination of the blue and green areas, but I have also seen larger belt ends with the green portion of the cast piece removed. In either case having the center of the belt end hollow uses a lot less metal, and also makes the belt end lighter.

hollow back belt fitting collageThis chunky looking Byzantine buckle front may look heavy, but as the picture on the right shows, it is actually hollow. The back plate is missing, and would have had a hook to actually close the belt.

Another square belt buckle fitting that I have is actually a carefully cast hollow form. The leather belt fills the entire inside of the hollow belt, and the metal is carefully riveted to the leather. The metal wraps down around the sides of the leather. The only way to tell that the belt buckle fitting is hollow is to turn it over and look at the back – a perfect fake heavy buckle.

Going back to manufacturing techniques, one of the most common differences between pre-1600 belt fittings and modern ones is that many of the modern versions of belt fittings are soldered.

Soldering was NOT common for non-precious metals on jewelry and accessories that were made prior to 1600. They did not have all of the fancy matching solders that we have today. And they certainly did not have oxy-propane torches.

Precious metals, like gold and fine silver can be fused, either in a furnace or soldered with a lamp and a blow-pipe, but base metals were generally riveted. Precious metals have different properties – they can be spot heated, but with base metals you have to heat the entire piece in order to solder them.

One of the important exceptions to this rule is the soldering of the heads of dressing pins. There was a decree during the reign of Henry VIII requiring that the heads be soldered. The solder that was used was lead based, and would show up badly – like the solder on my buckle below. (The decree was actually a form of trade sanction to make it more difficult for pins from the Low Countries to compete with British made pins.)

my buckle sideviewSo what are my theories on where these misconceptions came from, and what else is not as big as we might think? We will talk about that next time!

 

Choose the New Item for Our Shop!

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1. Take a look at the four pictures and descriptions below.
2. Send me an email at eirny@eirny.com with the number of the item that you want to see added to the shop at The Treasury.

If your item wins you will be put into a drawing to receive that item for FREE.

item # 1. Viking Raven Pendant. About 1 1/4 inches wide and 5/8 inches tall.

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Item # 2.  Tudor Dress Hook. About 1 1/4 inches wide and  a little less than 5/8 inches tall.

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Item # 3. Medieval Heart Mount. 1/2 inch wide and 7/16 inches tall. The surface has lovely swirled lines.

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Item # 4. English found, Annular Brooch. About 11/16 inches in diameter (tiny!) with a lovely rope pattern on the front.

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Don’t forget to vote! One of these items will be cast, in bronze, in my shop in September. The odds are in your favor.

 

What size Were Brooches in the Middle Ages – Part 6 – Buckles!

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Buckles. It seems an easy enough topic, but it turns out to be quite the pile of spaghetti.

First of all, based on most of the buckles that I see at SCA events buckles were huge prior to 1600. But, based on the artifacts that I see in my collection, and museum collections, they were often quite moderate in size.

Second, a buckle, is a buckle, is a buckle. Or is it?

Buckles(photo credit: Irene Davis 2015, from the Eirny Historic Collection)

This picture shows just a few of the Medieval buckles in my collection. The buckle with the strange looking hook is called a locking buckle, and this particular one, along with the buckle in the top left corner are both from Northern Ireland. The other buckles are all from England.

So let’s start with the simplest part – the size of buckles. It really isn’t a mystery. While buckles big enough to make a rodeo cowboy drool may look pretty cool, they really have very little to do with the buckles that were actually worn by most people prior to 1600. We have tons of buckles available for viewing on museum sites and lots of portraits of people wearing belts with buckles.

Let’s look at an example. How about a family portrait of Archduke Maximilian II, painted in 1563? If anyone could afford a big fancy buckle, he sure could. But you won’t find one in this picture.

This portrait of Queen Mary I, by Master John, shows the belts that were typical for women during this time frame. There is no real buckle, just some sort of fastener that allows the length of the belt to be adjusted.

Well surely someone had big buckles before 1600! So I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the British Museum online collections, and looked for the biggest buckles that I could find. This amazing Frankish buckle (675-725 AD) is 6 inches by 2 11/16 inches. Pretty respectable!  And this Visigothic buckle (550-600 AD) is 5 3/8 by 2 3/8 inches.

The first thing that I noticed when I started looking for big buckles was that large display type buckles were usually made up of several pieces. This Merovingian buckle is an excellent example. Each individual piece of the buckle is really not that huge, but the overall effect of the pieces when they are put together is pretty spectacular.

The second thing that I noticed about larger display type buckles, is that even most of those were really not that wide (the top to bottom dimension on our giant Frankish buckle in the Met was less than 3 inches).

Why do we see these limitations in size in pre-1600 buckles? Some of the obvious possibilities include cost, difficulty of construction. fashion, and functionality.

And that is what we will talk about next time.