Category Archives: Archaeological Finds

What Size Were Brooches in the Middle Ages Part 2 – Bronze Brooches and Other Tiny Things

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Last time I mentioned the fact that a lot of pre-1600 items are actually quite a bit smaller than we might modernly assume. In addition I mentioned the easy manufacturing techniques involved in lead and tin items.

Bronze requires dramatically more heat – nearly four times the heat! Temperatures near 2000° F require a furnace, with some sort of blower system, like a bellows. Bronze items would therefore have been a more specialized and expensive production. Not as elite as silver or gold, but not the bottom rung of lead and tin either. And even more important, bronze is much stronger than tin or lead.

Getting back to tiny things, let’s talk a little more about tiny brooches. Tiny brooches can’t be used on thick fabrics. This does NOT mean that they can only be used on linen, cotton, or other plant fiber fabrics. It just means that the fabric needs to be relatively thin.

Brooches like the little one that I bought have a big advantage over penannular brooches. A penannular brooch, if tugged and shaken enough can eventually open. But an annular brooch has to break, bend a lot, or have the fabric that it is attached to tear in order to let go. This gives it a couple of big advantages over the other forms of simple closures that were available pre-1600. It won’t open and it can lay super flat.

ringandbrokenringbroochesThe brooch on the left is an annular brooch and the one on the right is a penannular brooch, with a dime for scale (18mm). I chose a heart shaped annular brooch because I wanted to make a point about annular brooches. They must form a closed ring, but that ring can be just about any shape.

What forms of closures were available pre-1600? Laces or ties, hooks, hooks and eyes, buttons and toggles, penannular brooches, annular brooches, fibulas, dress pins, and other miscellaneous brooches. We already discussed penannular and annular brooches, so let’s look at the other options – remember we are looking at tiny things here, preferably things under half an inch, because that was the size of my little brooch. And there must have been a reason for that size, right?

Laces and ties. Easy to make, inexpensive and widely used. They can be made by the average person with commonly available supplies. They can be made to lie extremely flat, but they can break or untie, and it is very difficult to make them really tiny and still have sufficient structural integrity.

Hooks, and hooks and eyes. Exactly what is the difference? Modernly hooks and eyes are small metal sewing accessories that are available at any sewing supply store. Pre-1600 folks did have small hooks and eyes that were made out of metal wire, and they were definitely used extensively in the 1500’s, but there were also many other types of hooks used, and even some large cast hooks and eyes. Earlier cultures, like the Celts and Anglo Saxons sometimes used what I call “hooks and eyes on steroids” – sets where the individual pieces are each an inch or more long.

hooks and eyesThis picture shows a modern selection of hooks and eyes in various sizes on the right (the numbers are the sizes) and a 1500’s collection of hooks and eyes, from the Netherlands on the left. The size 3 modern hook is about 7/16th inch tall (12 mm).

So, if size is an issue the large hooks are out. The tiny hooks and eyes can lay fairly flat, and they meet the size criteria, but unlike many of their modern versions they did not have a little “bump” on the inside of the hook that make the hook and eye set “lock”. This means that the older hook and eyes would have to rely on tension pulling on them and keeping them in place. Without the tension, they open.

Next time: Hooks – Sharp and Blunt, and Buttons and Toggles

Wire Weaving – Not as Simple as it Seems: Part 5 – Consistency & Significance

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So last time we were discussing a particular set of authors, who were describing the structure of a Wire Woven Silver Scourge. They also listed several other artifacts. I raised the questions: Were they consistent in the use of the word Trichinopoly? And is ANY of this significant anyway?

As many college advisers in graduate school will tell you, it is important to find the original sources for the referenced chains. Not the articles that reference the discovery, but the actual reports with line drawings and pictures. Or, better yet, current high quality pictures of the artifacts themselves. The farther that you are from the original source of information the more likely that mistakes have entered into the record. In the ensuing 140 years since the finds, England has been involved in two major World Wars including the second World War which is known to have destroyed many items. It is possible that some of these pieces may have vanished or been destroyed.

The first artifact that the author mentioned was the Tara Brooch. I checked all of my research books looking for a picture that was good enough to discern which form of wire weaving was used. No luck.

I went online. The Tara Brooch is held by the National Museum of Ireland. They show poor quality pictures that focus completely on the elaborate gold work of the brooch. The chain on the brooch looks like a rat’s tail in most of the pictures – just a dark silhouette with almost no detail. I had always thought it was done in the Nahlbinding style of wire weaving, but I have no good proof.

The Great Hoard from Croy was next on my list. According to the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, this hoard was located in 1875 and 1876. The first portion of the hoard is described as containing ” part of a band of knitted silver wire”, and all of the hoard is held by the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland. J A Graham-Campbell’s main concern was whether the chain is of Scandinavian origin or not. He states, “The chain is manufactured in the Trichinopoly technique (Wilson and Blunt 1961, 93) and represents the possible Norse element in this hoard since similar chains have been found in the hoard from Cuerdale, Lancashire (Hawkins 1847, fig 84), deposited c AD 903, in the hoard from Skaill, Orkney (VA II, fig 60), deposited c AD 950, in the 9th-century Ballinaby grave 2, Islay (VA II, fig 18), and in the Inchkenneth hoard, deposited c AD1000; but the presence of such a chain, in the form of a scourge, in the hoard from Trewhiddle, Cornwall (Wilson and Blunt 1961, 84, 92-3, pixxvi, a), deposited c AD 875, raises the possibility that such chains found in insular contexts might be of Anglo-Saxon manufacture.”

The class teacher at Gulf War did not have a handout. We were permitted to use our phones to copy some not-great-photos of pictures of some of these pieces. The big problem is that all of the pictures are reproduced from drawings that were made of the pieces in the 1800’s. Are they accurate, or not? If they are accurate it appears that the chain from Inch Kenneth, Ballinaby, Skaill, Croy, and Garron Point are all made in the “Anglo- Saxon” fashion (knit rather than Nahlbinding).

But what if they are not accurate, or are inconsistent in their accuracy? I did try to locate the actual pieces of the hoards. The Cuerdale Hoard went to more than 170 locations including the British Museum, the Ashmolean Museum, and the National Museums in Liverpool. I viewed all 184 of the pictures of the Cuerdale Hoard that were available from the British Museum. It was all hack silver, bar stock and bracelets. A review of the Cuerdale pieces at the Ashmolean revealed about 40 pieces of silver – all hack silver, bar stock and bracelets. The National Museums, Liverpool are in the process of digitizing their artifacts and have nothing useful about the Cuerdale hoard online except a discussion of the over 800 coins from this hoard that they have in their numismatic collection. Dead End!

I finally found a picture of the chain from the Great Hoard of Croy online.  The description states that it is made in the Trichinopoly technique using a continuous wire. I have to admit, it does look to be knit, but the resolution of the picture is just NOT good enough to be certain.

But is any of this significant? I guess we will have to talk about that next time!

English: Tara Brooch

English: Tara Brooch (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Wire Weaving – Not as Simple an Issue as it Seems – Part 1

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Knit Chain has been a form that I’ve loved for 16 years. A recent class unexpectedly expanded my understanding of this technique and changed my view of some other skills, too.

Sometimes when I go to an event I wind up taking a class on a lark. Something I hadn’t planned to take. Something that just sparked a moment of curiosity. And sometimes that class can turn out to be an entirely new thing for me – a new area of study and experimentation.

Well, that happened this year for me at Gulf Wars. I was reading through the class list, and there it was – a class on Anglo Saxon Style Knit Chain.

OK.

I have been making and teaching Knit Chains, often incorrectly called Viking Wire Weaving, for about 16 years. I took a class at the Pennsic War and took my skills home with me to the West Kingdom. Many dozens of people now do this craft as a direct result of my classes – and some of my original students have gone on to perfect and teach this skill. I’ve helped dozens of others figure out how to finish or improve their pieces, so I am VERY familiar with the technique.

Since “Viking wire weaving” fascinates me, I’ve also done a considerable amount of research on the technique. I’m always looking for evidence of how these early skills were actually performed – tools, and artifacts.

Some researchers and academic papers told me that the technical name for the technique was Trichinopoly – an unfortunate term that was applied by a British Gentleman back in the late 1800’s – but more about that later. I wondered how long the technique had been used. So I started looking for other artifacts that could be credited to specific cultures and dated. Real artifacts pushed the use of the technique back to 400 BC in Turkey – waaay before the Vikings. It was surprised to find knit chains there. Wasn’t this supposed to be a Scandinavian thing? But I kept watching for more pieces, and one day I randomly happened upon a traveling exhibit of the female Pharaoh Hapshepsut ( 1479-1458 BC) from Egypt. I was wandering through, and there was a gold necklace made with this technique.

It was now very clear to me that this technique had nothing to do with the Vikings. They may have used it, but they did not appear to have invented it. In fact when I initially went to look for Viking pieces that used the technique, I couldn’t find any. I eventually did start to find them, first in Ireland and Scotland, and then in other areas, but it was really NOT that common. In the long run I discovered that the lack of consistent terminology that was used for the technique was one of the things that made it so hard to locate true knit chains. Most museums just lump the technique in with all of the other “chains”. The only way to actually tell if a piece is wire weaving is to find a good up close picture and actually figure out the pattern of the wire in the chain. Not an easy task.

Now to the individual who is used to standard chains made from links, it may seem silly that identifying something that was woven from something that was just “joined together” would be difficult, but if you understand the actual structural forms of wire weaving, and chain making, it will become obvious.

Next time: Viking Wire Weaving, Linked Chains, and Loop in Loop