DRESS HOOK

A very unusual early-medieval copper alloy double-hooked clasp. It has a central decorated flat circular plate with a tapering sharp hook curving under at either end.

The central plate is decorated with an engraved design consisting of a central ring-and dot motif surrounded by eight radiating petal shapes, each a narrow triangle ending in a double concentric annulet. The annulets are generally off-centre and rather carelessly engraved. In between each of the petals is a row of punched dots ending in a punched apex-in triangle with a central reserved circle. Around this stylised flower is a grooved circle, then a border of smaller punched triangles, apexes all clockwise.

At opposing outermost points of the circular plate are the two tapering hooks, each of which is incomplete and one of which is distorted. At the junction of the plate and hook the edges of the hook are embellished with a pair of back-to-back C shapes, each separated from the hook with a groove and decorated with tiny transverse grooves to form a ladder pattern. The hooks both curve downwards towards the reverse of the plate.

A 2mm diameter circular hole has been drilled through the clasp near to the edge, removing one of the dot-in-triangle punchmarks. There is no obvious function for this hole, which appears not to be part of the design.

The reverse of the clasp is undecorated, although it has many dots, grooves and scratches. The clasp has a vivid dark green patina. It measures 31.2mm long, 15.9mm wide and 1.0mm thick; it weighs 1.74g.

Very few parallels can be found for the form of this double-hooked tag or clasp. Read illustrates a few early-medieval hooked tags with radiating decoration (2008, 32, nos. 133-4) but none with a hook at either end. Circular double-hooked clasps are occasionally found among Tudor hooked tags (e.g. Read (2008, 133, no. 544, from a 16th-century context in Norwich, Margeson 1993, 18-19, no. 80).

The ornament on the plate argues strongly for an Anglo-Saxon, early-medieval date. The narrow radiating round-ended petals are similar to those found in three of the roundels on the Fuller brooch (British Museum, 1952,0404.1). The Fuller brooch is in late Trewhiddle style and dates to the very end of the 9th century (Webster 2012, 153-4). For further examples of these radiating round-ended petals on the PAS database, see PAS-E87CB3, HAMP-0B4001 and KENT-C6B9B6, all single-hooked tags made from silver.

A good early-medieval parallel on the database, with the same double-hooked form and nielloed decoration of a Trewhiddle-style animal, can be found at NMS-71B712Z.