327 (25)

Pins

299

medieval period. Two have smali round heads madę from a blob of glass (colour pl 7C), which was placed on the shank in a semi-molten State without the use of solder. Analyses have shown that the glass has a high lead eon tent. The head on no. 1469 is green, coloured by adding copper to the lead oxide and silica, and it is similar, for example, to that used in a setting of a contempor-ary brass finger ring (see no. 1620) and also to a pinhead from Coppergate, York (Radley 1971, 49). The other glass pinhead is near black (no. 1468), and this colour was also used for beads, annular finger rings, and inlays in stone and ivory carvings, although this is the first example apparently excavated from London. The third pin has a highly stylised circular head, cast in pewter, depicting the face of Christ framed by a nimbus with a billeted edge. The pinhead is partly carried out in openwork so that the head also takes on the form of a cross (no. 1470, fig 199 & colour pl 7E). A tiny hollow tubę behind the decoration accommodates the top of the pin shank, the two parts being soldered together. The making of this pin presumably coincided with the start of the mass output of pilgrim badges commemorating the martyrdom of Thomas Becket, and the reli-gious symbolism of the pinhead suggests that this may have influenced the way that it was worn.

From the character of these three pinheads there can be little doubt that they could have been madę in England. Evidence from various towns, particularly York, shows that glass with a high lead content continued to be madę in urban workshops to at least the late 12th century (Hendersen in Tweddle 1986, 226), while the high-medieval mass production of pewter jewel-lery, which had its beginnings in Anglo-Saxon England, is noted elsewhere in this volume (see p viii).

Most of the remainder of the pins came from deposits of the 14th and early 15th centuries, but there is a smali number from 13th-century deposits, so that there is a continuous seąuence for the period covered by the survey. Ninę of the pins with decorative heads were selected for XRF analysis by the AML supplemented by two with plain spherical heads, which were picked out not

198 Stefan Lochner, triptych c. 1440, Cologne

cathedral. Detail showing ladies wearing pins in their hair and dress

at random but because they looked different from the rest. One of these from a late 14th-century deposit (ceramic phase 11) proved to be silver (fig 199, no. 1488 - BWB83 acc. no. 2755), and the head and upper 5mm of the shank of the other pin (which is the longest pin in the collections) is tin coated, causing it to appear whiter presumably in simulation of silver (fig 204 SWA81 acc. no. 444). No other examples of pinheads coated with tin were identified in the collections and, although a coating may have been very thin so that it ąuickly wore off, it seems unlikely that the practice was widespread before the 16th century, with the exception of some larger cloak-size pins which are earlier than the period of this survey (Armstrong 1922, 77).

Examination by eye and with a binocular micro-scope enabled most of the pins lacking in decoration to be divided into two basie types: those with solid heads and those with wound-wire heads (fig 200). A few could not be so easily classified and it is uncertain to which category they belong, or whether they can be considered to form a further group. In addition a large number of pins had lost their heads. Traces of solder and bent shanks indicated that these pins had been used and could not, therefore, lay claim to represent the un-finished stock of pinners. No differences were discemible with regard to the pin shanks, and fine grooves along the length of most shanks indicate that the wire was pulled through metal draw-plates (Capie 1983, 277).

The solid heads of pins are spherical or hemi-spherical, with a rangę of variations in between sińce they appear to have been hammered into shape rather than being cast in moulds (fig 201). The hemispherical heads can be either fiat on top or fiat on the underside and this is also illustrated by the two most common types of decorated pinheads, the pentagonal heads generally having a fiat underside and those with ąuadrants and dots that are flat-topped (fig 201). It is, however, unusual for the plain pinheads to be as fiat as the decorated heads, which were smoothed with a file.

Pins with wound-wire heads appear to have been introduced into London at a similar period to those with solid heads (described above) and to have abounded in similarly large numbers. They also can be sub-divided into two types, those with spherical heads and those with heads that have