395 (13)

368

Dress Accessońes

245 Antler composite combs with copper alloy rivets nos. 1719-20 and top right MoL acc. no. A14724, hom comb no. 1721 (1:2)

because of the comb’s fragmentary condition, it appears that the rivets pierced the tooth-plates as well as sometimes passing between them. A hole in the end-plate would have enabled the comb to be suspended from a girdle or chain and is a feature that is absent from later-medieval combs which appear often to have been kept in pouches. The style of the comb, with its plain connecting-plates, extravagant use of rivets, finely spaced teeth and pierced end-plate conforms to a number of contemporary examples from Schleswig in north Germany, and Lund in south Sweden (Ulbricht 1984, pl 29 no. 6 and pl 70 nos. 2-3; Persson 1976, 324 and 326 figs 291 & 292 nos. 25 & 35-36). There is, at present, insufficient evid-ence from England to judge how common they were in this country; one has been recorded from Southampton (łan Riddler, pers. comm.) and an unprovenanced example was given to the London Museum by its first director, Guy Laking (MoL acc. no. A14724, fig 245).

The other antler comb from a 13th-century London context was originally double-sided, but

the morę closely spaced teeth were at some stage filed down to the level of the connecting-plates, perhaps because of breakage (no. 1719, figs 245 & 246). The comb is rectangular with two tooth-plates, 28mm and 35mm wide, in con-trast to earlier composite combs which usually had narrower tooth-plates and morę of them, numbering as many as fifteen on one lOth-century comb of exceptional length from London (Pritch-ard forthcoming, fig 3.76). Sandwiched between the connecting-plates are two strips of bronze sheeting rendered yisible by a series of three openwork crosses cut in the antler connecting-plates. Two thicker strips of bronze were added as end-plates and the whole comb was assembled with nineteen rivets of copper alloy, of which only the outer two secured the bronze end-plates.

Composite combs incorporating metal sheeting became popular in northem Europę during the 12th century. Openwork patterns cut into connecting-plates of antler or bonę freąuently took the form of crosses, and single-sided as well as double-sided combs were decorated in this