CLOTH SEAL

An incomplete post-Medieval lead alloy two-disc cloth seal (c. 1500-c. 1650).

The seal is formed by two circular discs, one with a hole in the centre and the other with a stud protruding. These discs are joined by an integral connecting strip which is folded in half so the discs over-lay each other, and the stud protrudes through the hole. The seal is then stamped on the discs creating a design on both faces. The design has worn smooth but may have related to the heraldic badge of the city of Augsburg a stylised pine cone.

These seals are from linen warp, cotton weft fabrics that were known in England as 'Ousbrow or Augusta fustians' in the sixteenth-/early seventeenth-century.

This cloth seal has a buff patina and only a stub of the connecting strip survives.

Diameter: 18.4mm; thickness: 3.5mm. Weight: 4.20g.

The pinecone is sometimes interpreted as a teasel (Dipsacus fullonum) because of the connection to the cloth trade, but the history of the arms of Augsburg shows that before 1260 a tree-of-life was the central feature, after which it became a bunch of grapes in a canting reference to a variety of grapes (Augster), and finally in the late 15th century the grapes were replaced with a cone from the Swiss stone pine (Pinus cembra).

The diameter is 18mm and the weight 5.21g.