322 (32)

294

Dress Accessories

Unthrown silk was bound round the wire in at least 11 examples (nos. 1455-65), all from a late 14th-century deposit where conditions of pre-servation were exceptionally good compared with elsewhere in the city. Onto this wire foundation finer and morę flexible silk-covered wires were applied. One iron frame covered with silk has two interlinking silk-covered wires twisted round it in the form of tiny figure-of-eight knots (no. 1465, fig 194). These knots are in turn bound in place by silk thread. Another silk-covered wire frame, which is madę from copper-alloy rather than iron, preserves traces of a silk veil stitched to the frame (no. 1461, fig 195). This veil is tabby-woven from Z-twisted thread and its open texture means that it would have been semi-transparent. There are fragments of seven other silk veils of this type from late 14th-century London but nonę of these are associated with a wire frame (Crow-foot et al. forthcoming).

The use in the 14th and 15th centuries of silk-covered wire has received scant attention. Similar wire is today sometimes called ‘millinery wire’ and its association with headdress is, there-fore, longlived. It is possible that the output of female workers known in 13th-century Paris as chapeliers de fleurs, who are listed in the Livre des Metiers (Depping 1837, 246; Evans 1952, 24), involved the creation of wire headdresses. A beąuest in 1328 by Roger Sterre to his daughter Matilda of a garland of pearls with silk streamers (Cal Wills 1889, 335) may refer to a product of this type but until documentary research on this topie has been undertaken much must remain speculative. Silk-covered wire could be twisted into a myriad of forms to decorate items of either secular or sacred use and it is generally artefacts of the latter type that have been preserved. These include a number of 14th and 15th-century reliąuaries embellished with multi-coloured silk-wire flowers, often with seed pearls and beads threaded onto them, for example a 15th-century reliąuary crown of St Kunigunde in Bamberg cathedral, West Germany, and ritual cushions known as ‘paradise gardens’ for nuns taking their vows (Meckseper 1985, 476-8, no. 392). By the 16th century similar wire decoration was sometimes used on bookcovers. Some motifs are madę from wire which was coiled into a spiral form, a type of wire known as purl in the 16th century (Digby 1963, 10), and this helps to explain the lengths of smali coiled wire among the pieces from London (nos. 1455-57, 1459 & 1460).

Another type of wire hair ornament from London is a double ended, U-shaped pin decorated with twisted wire which was found at Finsbury Circus (MoL acc. no. A1384; fig 196). The style of the twisted wire decoration, which is also associated with brooches (nos. 1339-41, fig 164), a finger ring (no. 1622, fig 217) and cosmetic tools (fig 251), suggests that it dates to the 14th century. It was probably used to hołd in place a woman’s linen headdress, the decoration imitat-ing the effect of a frilled headdress edge such as that portrayed on the effigy of queen Eufemia of Denmark (fig 167; Newton and Giza 1983, 142— 50).

Further examples of coiled wire from late 14th and early 15th-century deposits may have come from headdresses but this is uncertain sińce the pieces are fragmentary and, as pointed out above, wire of different gauges was used to decorate many types of artefact. One item merits attention here, although it does not appear to have been a hair accessory. This is a strip of delicate wire twisted into cinquefoils (no. 1467, fig 197). The cinquefoils are arranged in pairs which were formed by twisting two lengths of very flexible narrow gauge wire. Sometimes a pair of cin-quefoils was worked from the same length of wire and sometimes alternate wires were used. The finished piece probably would have been stitched onto a cloth for decoration rather in the manner of a braid.

Hair-piece

1450 BC72 acc. no. 3695 (context 250) ceramic phase 10 fig 192

Plait of human hair, probably blond European (identified by Harry M. Apple yard), 1 382mm; bound with Z-twisted cords of similar hair and stitched to a tablet-woven braid with a two-ply thread of silk which is used double. A second piece of hair, 1 120mm, is twisted rather than plaited, attached to it at each end are threads of two-ply silk. The braid was woven with 26 tablets; the outer two tablets on each side had four holes and were given quarter turns in one direction, the remaining 22 tablets were threaded through two holes and were tumed altemately baekwards and forwards; surviving 1 240mm, w lOmm. Groups of holes recur at intervals of c.lOmm along the braid indicating where mounts were positioned.