CANDLE HOLDER

Folding candlestick made of copper-alloy sheet. One arm consists of a rectangular-section bar tapering to a point, with a D-shaped projection close to the wider end. This has three evenly spaced slots and a central perforation. Through the perforation is a hinge bar. The other arm is made from a piece of copper-alloy strip, 7 mm wide, folded in half with a slot cut in the fold to accommodate the D-shaped projection, and hinging around the bar. A little way down each face, the arm is decoratively cut away around a transverse rectangular lobe. Further away from the hinge is a neatly made copper-alloy rivet, which sandwiches a second plate between the two halves of the folded strip. This central plate is again 7 mm wide and extends from the rivet right up into a slot on the D-shaped projection, with a little spur to one side over the hinge bar.

Further away from the hinge is a second, larger, copper-alloy rivet; this holds the two halves of the folded strip to a large rectangular piece which is bent into a cylindrical socket 23 mm deep, c. 9 mm internal diameter at the top and 12 mm diameter at the bottom. The rivet also holds, on the reverse of the folded strip, a much smaller rectangular piece again bent into a socket, this time only 6 mm deep and with an oval section (perhaps squashed?) 8 mm wide internally. Neither socket is closed; the larger one has to have an open seam to allow the point to fold back into it.

A similar complete example (although without the second smaller socket) from the Museum of London is shown in Egan 1998, p. 147, and this shows how they would have worked. The central plate in the slot prevents the hinge from moving; when the candlestick needs to be unfolded, the central plate is swung out, revolving on the rivet, and the it is then swung back to lock the candlestick at closed, fully open, or half open forming a right angle. The pointed arm (which is often found detached) can be driven into a door, window or other block of wood. The London example has rouletted decoration, which together with the well-concealed separate rivets of the West Stow example dates the group to the medieval period. A third example comes from Hull (ref. given in Egan 1998).