DRESS HOOK

An incomplete cast copper alloy dress hook/ clothes fastener, dating to the Post Medieval period, between AD 1600 - 1700 (length: 32.5mm; width: 15mm; thickness: 1mm; weight: 1.1g).

At the top of the artefact, there is a rectangular suspension/ attachment loop. This is integrally connected to the main openwork and decorated central body of the artefact, which is circular in plan and flat in side section. The central body has a slightly incomplete decorated outer border (thickness: 2.5mm), which although worn, appears to be comprised of approximately fifteen beads/ pellets to the left ad right of the suspension loop. The inner openwork decoration within the border is incomplete and worn although eight open decorative holes (average diameter: 1mm) are still visible in the bottom half of the artefact. The complete and integral cast copper alloy hook (length: 11.5mm; width: 2mm; thickness at collar: 1mm) curls round to the back of the artefact. The back of the dress hook is flat and undecorated and, overall, the dress hook is in a worn and poor condition with a patchy dark green patina.

In the publication 'Norwich Households: Medieval and Post-Medieval Finds from the Norwich Survey Excavations 1971-78', 1993 (page 17), Margeson states that the dress hook or hooked tag 'seems to have undergone a revival in the 16th century, when cast, highly decorated and often openwork examples were popular. They, like their Saxon equivalents, were clearly used for a variety of purposes associated with clothes fastening and accessories'. From material excavated in Amsterdam, some of these tags were 'used at each end of a decorative chain, perhaps for fastening a cloak. The sharp hooks were probably used with cords or hooked straight into the material, rather than with "eyes". The examples from Amsterdam come from late 16th/ early 17th-century contexts' (page 17).