289 (31)

261

Brooches

reappearance of secular lead/tin alloy brooches of this one-piece form in the 14th cen tury comes rather later than the introduction of religious souvenirs of the same basie form. The simiiarity to pilgrim badges of the earliest (?late 13th- or early 14th-century) disc brooches listed below could mean that the latter are non-explicit ver-sions of religious souvenirs. If so, the delayed emergence of a market for the secular one-piece brooches is even morę marked (the earliest figurative examples listed below are from the late 14th century). The definite secular brooches described below are all from the late 14th and early 15th centuries.

The wide rangę of subject matter among those brooches with figurative designs may broadly be compared with the morę naturalistic marginal drawings of late-medieval manuscripts. Notable among the brooches listed below for their unusual degree of accurate detail in representing a natural form are those with a three-dimensional violet growing out of a grassy tuft (nos. 1364 etc).

These cheap, figurative brooches are a re-markable manifestation of mass-produced popular art. Some motifs appear in several different ver-sions, and were clearly very fashionable. A few are known both in England and the continent. Completely absent among the recent finds, and apparently unknown in England so far, are the highly explicit pomographic brooches of the kind found in some numbers both in France and the Netherlands (Forgeais 1866, 257-69; Hopstaken 1987, 49-56).

Presumably many, if not all, of these lead alloy brooches would once have been painted, though only traces of red colouring survive on a few of the comparable pieces not included here.

Non figurative designs

Disc brooches

1353 BWB83 acc. no. 440 (context 284) ceramic phase 9 fig 169

Incomplete; d c.21mm; four fleurs de lis around a central boss, all within a four-lobed tressure, with a dot at each point and in the interstices, surrounded by a band with dots and a running scroll with trefoils; beaded border.

169 Disc brooches (1:1)