343 (24)

316

Dress Accessońes

TIN

1584    SWA81 acc. no. 2788 (context 2108) ceramic phase 12 fig 209

Flattened; 1 9mm; tin (AML).

Presumably originally spherical - a spherical bead also found in London (private collection, colour pl 11C) is the same length and probably provides an indication of the original appearance.

1585    SWA81 3294 (2112) 12 fig 209 Distorted; 1 lOmm; longitudinally ribbed; tin (AML); presumably originally oval.

No other excavated base-metal bead of early 15th-century datę has been traced in this country. Pewter beads are known in the Saxo-Norman Cheapside Hoard (Guildhall Museum Catalogue 1908, 119 nos. 39-43 & pl LIV no. 13; VCH London 1909, 160 fig 17). One part of a 13th-century stone mould for metal beads has been excavated in Lund in Sweden (Bergman and Billberg 1976, 207 fig 151).

GLASS

Very few glass beads have been recovered from deposits of the period covered by this volume. (BIG82 acc. no. 3282 is thought to be residual from the Roman period - Margaret Guido, pers. comm. - and is therefore omitted here.) The difficulty of seeing these smali objects in the ground is somewhat lessened (as with those of red coral) by their bright colouring. Their present sparsity may therefore suggest that glass was not very popular for beads among medieval London-ers. Sieving on futurę sites could throw further light on this ąuestion.

The cargoes of ships bringing goods to London in 1384 included 13 patemosters of glasse, 14 gross bedes de glas and three gross patemosters de vitro (Public Record Office, Customs Accounts E122/71/8 - reference kindly provided by V Harding).

Comments on the methods of manufacture of the two following beads were provided by J Bayley.

The diverse indications of datę do not permit any useful inference.

1586 BIG82 acc. no. 3282 (context 4533) ceramic phase 7 fig 209 & colour pl 9A

Spheroid; d 5.5mm; translucent green; surface de-cayed. Tracę flanges at the ends suggest that this was produced by extrusion followed by cutting down to the size of the individual bead (ie a cane bead); the roughly parallel sides to the channel intemally contrast to the concavity of beads produced by this method in earlier periods.

1587 TL74 1274 (368) 12 fig 209 & colour pl 9A

Incomplete; spheroid; d 4mm; translucent green; un-decayed.

The channel flares morę markedly at one end than at the other, a feature of beads produced by piercing a hot blob of glass set on a flattish surface with a sharp instrument.

UNMOUNTED ITEMS

Pearl

1588 TL74 acc. no. 3267 (context 2416) ceramic phase 9 colour pl 11B Spherical; d 4.5mm; pale pinkish-buff; no evidence for use. This, the only pearl recovered from the recent sites, is a perfect sphere - an unusual feature in the period prior to commercial culture - and its pink hue is uncommonly pronounced. By modem standards this pearl is of ąuite poor ąuality (staff of Cartier Ltd, pers. comm.). It is difficult to gauge how valuable it might have been considered by the medieval jewellery trade.

S Morris (British Museum, Natural History) comments that this object could not have passed into the dumps at the Trig Lane site as kitchen waste (despite the vast numbers of oyster shells found there) sińce the native edible oyster (Osłrea eduliś) does not pro-duce gem-quality pearls. It is probably significant that the same group of dumps produced some of the amber-and coral-working waste described above. A pearl of this ąuality was almost certainly an exotic import, intended for decoration, though Evans (1921, 63) notes a reference to English pearls in abundance. It is unlikely to be from a freshwater mussel (Anodonta anodonta, A. cygnea, or 4. margaritifera margańtifera. A plausible source is the tropical marinę pearl oyster (Pinctada margaritifera). The pearl trade of the Per-sian Gulf was at its height in the 13th-14th centuries, and this item, found in a deposit from the middle of this period, may have been imported from the Near East or India (cf Webster 1975, 447). Pearls were used in a rangę of different items of jewellery in the medieval period (Evans 1921, 36). Among goods imported to