238 (53)

209

Mounts

Further lost mounts are evidenced by:

a leather strap in two separate parts accompanying iron buckie no. 416 - the leather of this apparently complete girdle has holes and some roves surviving from about thirty missing mounts set in a single row along the centre;

leather girdle no. 19 with paired rivets from at least three mounts (possibly circular, ?d c.l5mm - see fig 26);

leather girdle no. 20 with two sets of paired rivet holes for (?)ring mounts d 14mm, and with six surviving dome-headed iron rivets in a central row at the other surviving end (possibly used as mounts in their own right - see fig 27).

See also girdle no. 26 for iron pins (cf rivets) set in pattems to give a similar effect to mounts - fig 29.

BAR-MOUNTS

and variants

‘Bar’ is a contemporary term used of girdle mounts of a particular form (Hume 1863, 131-33, citing three occurrences in Chaucer - eg the sergeant-at-law in the Canterbury Tales is wear-ing clothes described as ‘rood but hoomly in a medlee cote, girt with a ceint [girdle] of silk with barres smalę’ - Prologue, lines 328-29, and also a 13th-century reference to girdles ‘barred with silver’, stipata argento, and mid 14th-century orders for 30 buckles together with 60 bars, and for 60 buckles together with 6 bars). Although it is not certain precisely which mounts would have been referred to as ‘bars’, bar-mounts are for the present purpose defined as those in which the width (discounting the central lobe in some exam-ples) is lOmm or less, and equals no morę than half the length (ie the dimension transverse to the strap). This rather arbitrary definition serves to isolate a group of quite simple mounts of a distinctive narrow form - though they can be seen as continuous with larger mounts listed as rec-tangular (thus no. 1047 appears under rectangular mounts, but no. 1132, which falls just outside the above definition, is listed under the present head-ing because of the similarity to no. 1164; its distinctive form and method of manufacture is paralleled among these mounts and not else-where). Although some bar mounts are very plain when seen singly in isolation, they make an effective decoration when several are set together or in combination with mounts of other forms.

Bar-mounts were normally attached trans-versely in a row on straps, usually evenly spaced, and generally spanning the fuli width of the leather (though see on no. 1140 and fig 138, bottom for exceptions, and cf Hume 1863, fig on pl33). They may be set very close together, or morę widely spaced. Contemporary depictions show them on men’s waist belts and sword belts, as well as on horse-hamess straps etc - eg the sword belts on four of the 13th-century sculp-tured effigies of knights in the Tempie Church of St Mary in London (see fig 132, and cf RCHM 1929, 140-41, pis 182-83 nos. 3, 4, 7 & 8); the horse in the St Martin group sculpture at Bas-senheim in Germany has them on the straps of the head hamess and on the girth strap which

which is no morę than half their

Bar mounts and variants: these have a length of 10mm or less, and width.

length

simple bar

f central ridge

■=»

U	u

bar with	bar with	ar row
terminal lobes	terminal and central lobes

bar with suspension loop

131