329a

302

Dress Accessories

201    Pins with different forms of solid heads from a late 14th-century deposit in London (2:1)

202    Polygonal-headed pins with dot ornament: on the right no. 1483 and on the left no. 1484 (2:1)

ing of red coral in 14th-century London).

The other four types of decorated pins have solid metal heads which differ only in their form or manner of decoration. Pins with pentagonal heads appear to have been wom in the first half of the 14th century (nos. 1474-77, figs 199 & 201). These were followed by pins with hemispherical heads decorated with a pattem of ąuadrants with dots, madę by stamping the flattened head with a die (nos. 1478-82, figs 199 & 200), and also by polygonal-headed pins with dot ornament (fig 202, nos. 1483-84). The latter recall similar pattemed pinheads of earlier epochs, although these were always larger (eg Addyman and Hill 1969, 68, fig 26, nos. 6-8; Waterman 1959, 78, fig 11, nos. 5-7 & 10-12). A pin with a cubic head pattemed with dots in the manner of dice was also reco-vered from a 14th-century deposit. By the early 15th century pins with heads shaped in the form of acoms were being wom (figs 199 and 203, nos. 1485-87) and analysis reveals that two of these have heads madę from gunmetal rather than brass, which was used for the shank. The fact that pins with similar decoration have been reco-vered from several sites in the City suggests that they must have been mass-produced. That nonę of these pattems appears as yet to have been recorded elsewhere in Europę begs the ąuestion whether all pins were imported, as is freąuently asserted. There is also evidence that a certain type of pin was particularly associated with Eng-land, sińce among several thousand pins purch-ased in 1400 from Jehan de Breconnier, a Parisian pinner, for the Duchess of Orleans were 500 de la