BOOK FITTING

A complete copper alloy book mount of Howsam type B.1.4, dating to c.1150 - c.1200. The object is lozenge-shaped and has a C-shaped cross-section. There is a flat circular knop at each of the four points; these each have a circular perforation through them. The edge of each side flares out to meet its neighbour at the centre, forming a elongated V-shaped edge.

The front of the object has been decorated with a cross formed of three deeply incised grooves, forming two ridges that run from the knops to the centre. Overlying this is a cross consisting of two incised grooves with a central ridge, which cross in the centre forming a tiny central square. The object and decoration resembles a soft parcel or cushion, tied with a piece of ribbon. The reverse is concave and is undecorated. The object is a dark green in colour and has an even glossy patina due to recent cleaning. Dimensions: 53.7 mm x 53.7 mm x 8.9 mm. Weight: 38.57g.

A similar but not identical object has been recorded on the PAS database at WMID-318F19. Howsam includes another example from an excavated context at Rievaulx Abbey (2016, 95, no. 301) and allocates this to her type B.1.4.

Howsam comments (2016, 96) that there is good manuscript evidence supporting the classification of these mounts as book fittings. A late twelfth-century copy of the Letters of St Jerome (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Lyell 2) written in England and once owned by the Cistercian monks of Holme Cultram Abbey, Cumberland, has four furnishings attached to its front cover (De la Mare 1971, 3). They have been described as being "shaped like woolpacks" (De la Mare 1971, 3) and are very similar in form and appearance to the fitting excavated from Rievaulx Abbey.

De la Mare, A., ed. 1971. Catalogue of the collection of medieval manuscripts
bequeathed to the Bodleian Library, Oxford, by James P. R. Lyell. Oxford: Clarendon
Press.