Book fittings recorded on the Portable Antiquities Database
My Presidential Address to the Bibliographical Society earlier this year (19 March 2024) included details of the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) database: https://finds.org.uk/
My intention was to draw attention to this well designed and enormous database which might offer suggestions of how to deal with recording printed fragments often found in book bindings.
The database is intended for recording archaeological finds made by anyone, principally members of the public, often with metal detectors, and it is managed by the British Museum. Reporting objects is voluntary, and it is not to be confused with the 1996 Treasure Act, amended in 2023, which is a UK Act of Parliament intended to monitor the discovery of objects of outstanding national interest, at least three hundred years old, and usually made of gold or silver.
The PAS database currently records nearly 1.8 million objects and it is added to constantly. It is easy to search under a wide range of key words, objects are generally well described, and they are usually illustrated.
Sometimes the work of the archaeologist enters the world of the book historian, and here there are many examples. Try searching the fields of “book clasp” or “seal matrix” for literally thousands of examples; an example of a book fitting is below. There are Roman seal boxes and styli, lead pencils of various dates, some early medieval aestels of fine quality, papal bullae which are excavated and now separated from the documents to which they were once attached, post-medieval lead horn books, and the so-called parchment prickers, and parchment clips – which in both cases are unlikely to have anything to do with book production.
Treat yourself to a browse!
Richard Linenthal, Past President
BOOK FITTING
Unique ID: NMS-7D0635
Object type certainty: Certain
Workflow status: Awaiting validation
Complete medieval copper-alloy one-piece book fastening of Howsam’s (2016) type A.9.2. It consists of a flat rectangular and hollow plate (or box), open at the attachment end to receive the strap, and a lonzengiform quatrefoil boss projecting from the opposite end followed by a zoomorphic (animal-headed) looped terminal with a separate ring attached. There is a circular hole on the underside of the boss to fit onto a peg mounted on the book cover. Close to the attachment end there are a pair of rivet holes on both the front and rear parts of the plate. One of these retains a remnant of a copper-alloy rivet at the rear.
The front of the plate is engraved with the Christogram ihc: the first three letters of the name Jesus in Greek (ΙΗΣΟΥΣ) transliterated into Latin letters. This is rendered in a reserved and serifed script on a rectangular background field of engraved oblique hatching. The upper and lower serifs of the h have ornate and expanded embellishments that extend beyond the rectangular field.
The boss is thicker than the plate and is moulded into a lozengiform quatrefoil flower motif on the front. At the centre is a very slightly recessed square, divided into nine smaller squares by two vertical and two horizontal fine grooves. On each of the four sides there is a sub-triangular petal with concave outside edges. The overall shape is maintained with minimal expansion from front to rear, or until another element of the object is reached: one petal overlaps slightly with the plate while the opposite one is superimposed on the rear of the animal head terminal.
The head emerges at approximately the same width as the petal and widens sightly and concavely until the brow. From here it narrows concavely again, forming the snout. An arched ridge on the top of each side of the head behind the brow depicts the ears. The snout has a central longitudinal ridge or arris which is concave when viewed side-on. Short, finely engraved grooves depict a pair of lentoid eyes and wrinkles on the top of the snout. The very end of the snout is flat, vertical and immediately joined to the circular loop, which is aligned at approximately ninety degrees to the plate. The attached ring is simple, circular in cross-section and of slightly larger diameter than the loop. It has no gap or visible seam.
The whole object is flat on the reverse. The metal is patinated dark green all over. Cf. Ibid 127, fig. 2-72. Further parallels on this database include IOW-7D75B7, BERK-AC4903, NMS-369AB8 and LIN-74ACFC. Late 14th to early 15th century.
