DRESS FASTENER (DRESS)

Incomplete composite silver-gilt dress-hook (hook missing) with a lozenge-shaped back, to which 'rope-twist' filigree decoration had been soldered (3-strand filigree wire bordered by three circlets and granulated pellets in the corners, and 3 circlets on the four hollow, hemispherical bosses. There is one surviving large pellet at the end of one of the straight filigree strands. There is a central perforation for a decorative knop, probably a flower head, which is now missing. There are to punched or engraved marks ('II'?) on the reverse from the manufacturing process for the plate. Gilding does not extend to the back. There is a split along one of the punched lines beneath the former location of a strand of filigree, and no evident traces of attachment point for the hook (unless it was in one with the central knop stem). Maximum width 27.7 mm; thickness of back plate 0.2mm; weight 3.6g.

This dress hook is a match for another from Bronington found in 2010 (Treasure Reference No.10.09), having the same disposition of filigree annulets and strands, and similar dimensions. The weights of both are also similar, and they presumably once formed a pair, or part of a larger set. Decorative dress-hooks have been found more often than the smaller hook loops (for example Parham, Suffolk; Treasure Annual Report 2002, no. 138; Thornton and Mitchell 2003, fig. 1a, b), Petersfield, Hants (ibid, fig. 3), West Malling, Kent (Treasure Annual Report 1998-9, no. 216) and related to examples with cusped trefoil back-plates from Caldecote, Warwickshire and Staxton, N. Yorkshire (Gaimster, Hayward, Mitchell and Parker 2002, figs 4, 5). For a dress hook from the Hitcham area decorated with a simpler version of a similar layout, see Treasure Annual Report 2004, no. 278. Another from Postwick, Norfolk, has a six-lobed backplate (Treasure Annual Report 2003, no. 236). Documentary evidence indicates that these items were popular in the sixteenth century (the latest reference in an inventory being dated 1598; Gaimster et al 2002, 184; Thornton and Mitchell 2003).