Domestic brasswork—Metal signs and badges—Ornamental trinkets—Arms and armour.

As the collector of copper and brass assembles his treasures and arranges them according to the different periods in which they were made, it is always the household utensils which predominate. As time goes on their number increases and the ornamental blends with the useful; but the increase in the variety is only in proportion to the gradual extension of the number of other household curios of contemporary dates.

The period under review, for convenience termed mediÆval, extends in actual fact from the rougher days of the Norman sovereigns to those when bluff King Hal held court and Elizabeth made so many "grand tours" among the country seats of her people. At the beginning of this period the furniture of even the nobility and wealthy ecclesiastics was very scanty, and when the proud barons moved from one castle to another they carried with them all their household furnishings, even their more treasured culinary utensils of copper and brass. They stowed them away along with their jewels and their other belongings in oak coffers, which in the earliest days were made so that they could be carried on poles by retainers.

Domestic Brasswork.

In mediÆval days the metal-work was "home made," that is to say, it was the work of retainers and those who were employed upon an estate. The old smiths not only worked in iron but wrought copper and brass, and the founders were building up a reputation; and their chief men were laying down rules for the guidance of the craftsmen. The influence exerted upon the metal-work of this country by the trade guilds of London is referred to in Chapter VI. In their prosperity no doubt the kitchens of the once powerful guilds were filled with cooking vessels indicative of the feasts held by the freemen of the different crafts. Some may say there are still evidences of such feasts; but most of the cooking vessels of early days perished in the Great Fire, although doubtless there are relics of a later period to be found in the kitchens and cellars of the Guildhall and some of the lesser halls.

Some of the companies, if they have lost their treasures, still possess records which are helpful to the antiquary, and we naturally turn to the parchments and books of the Worshipful Company of Founders, and there, appropriately enough, it is written that at one time they had jurisdiction over the manufacture of candlesticks, buckles, spurs, stirrups, straps, lavers, pots, ewers, and basins of brass and latten. The mark of the mystery was early made a ewer, a ewer and two candlesticks being given to the Founders in 1590, when they obtained a grant of arms; the motto they adopted was: "God is the only Founder."

The foundries of the craftsmen, workers, and casters of brass, latten, and kindred alloys in London were chiefly in and near Lothbury, among their most noted products being candlesticks and spice mortars—two staples which have become nearly obsolete, although none would say that the founding of metal is as yet an obsolete craft. Thus it is change and development are seen everywhere in production. The chief privileges of the Founders have gone, although they still take some little part in the stamping of weights and measures; but that, too, has become a Government duty. The Founders have some interesting pieces of plate, but not much copper. Their best example of their own craft is the ancient poor-box of copper which was presented to the Company by Mr. Stephen Pilchard in 1653, the year in which he was Upper Warden.

The feeding of man has always been the first duty of those who took charge of domestic arrangements, and we can readily understand that the caldron or cooking-pot was the earliest vessel. Its use may be regarded as universal, for it is found to have existed everywhere (see Chapter VIII). In mediÆval England the feasting of the poor and the feeding of scores of retainers in the baronial halls and in the great ecclesiastical buildings, where hospitality and charity were rife, necessitated immense boiling-pots. Some of those referred to under "Domestic Utensils" (Chapter VIII) seem to some too large for practical purposes. It may, however, be pointed out that there are many large cooking-pots in use even at the present time; and copper caldrons of large size are used in hospitals and infirmaries. Quite recently there appeared in the public Press photographs of a well-known Countess making an Irish stew at Liberty Hall, Dublin, stirring round the contents with a wooden stirrer and lading out bowlfuls of soup with a metal scoop; it was food for the sufferers through the strike at that time going on in Dublin. It is thus that the poor of all ages have been fed. As kitchen operations were confined to lesser areas and smaller vessels were needed by individual families when patriarchal systems were broken up, they were but replicas in miniature of the larger caldrons and vessels which had become too large.

It is wisely said, "Fingers were made before spoons," a fact true enough, but as time went on and the habits and customs of men and women became less rough, although as yet hardly refined, a need sprang up for utensils for personal use. Hitherto cooking forks and spoons were used in the kitchen, but the hunting-knife mostly served at table. It is true spoons were in use in very early times and even by the common people. At first of iron or wood, afterwards made of brass and latten, they are found wherever there are remains of mediÆval dwellings. A Scotchman is said to have declared that "the discovery of hot broth was an epoch in the evolution of man, and that as the ladle is to the pot so is the spoon to the bowl."

Such brass ewers and basins, known as aquamaniles, mostly of bronze (one of Continental make is illustrated in Fig. 11) were used for the purpose of washing the hands, over which the water was poured. They were used in connection with bowls. Another type of laving ewer is that of the gemellions, made in pairs, one portion being held under a person's hands while water was poured out of the spouted bowl. Gemellions seem to have been the somewhat clumsy prototypes of the more convenient jug and bowl of later days. The use of ewers and basin was very necessary both before and after meals when knives and spoons were little used and it was no uncommon thing for two persons to eat out of one dish.

In mediÆval days even domestic articles were frequently decorated, for English and European metal-workers had caught the figure work of the Oriental school. Their ornament took the form of hunting and battle scenes. Sometimes patrons were eulogized, and flattering inscriptions covered the objects wrought for them by their servile dependents. In Fig. 18 there is shown a bucket or bath vessel now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, rather an unusual piece of early metal-work and an interesting mediÆval curio. Not long ago a similar bucket was dug up in the neighbourhood of Weybridge.

We are apt to regard with disdain what we term the grandmotherly legislation which tampers with the liberty of the subject. The present day, however, is not alone remarkable for regulations by which the home life of the nation is controlled. The Norman law which ordered "lights out" when curfew rang cut short the "overtime" of the worker of that day. So stringent was the enforcement of that law that not a glimmer of light must be seen after the appointed time. To darken or extinguish the dying fire on the hearth the couvre de feu became a feature. Such covers of well authenticated antiquity are rare; the one illustrated in Fig. 12 is a well-preserved example now in the Bolton Museum.

Metal Signs and Badges.

In the early days when serfdom had not long ceased and the retainers of the nobles had not won their full freedom or independence, signs and symbols of their allegiance to some chief or overlord were plentiful. The Crusaders brought back with them signs, amulets, and various objects which they wore with more or less superstitious belief. The pilgrims to the most noted shrines in this country followed suit, and all these various purposes and mediÆval customs have furnished the curio-hunter with many delightful reminders of the "good old days" when superstition and almost idolatry were rife. Old Father Thames has preserved many of them for centuries, and twentieth-century collectors are richer thereby.

In the Guildhall Museum in London there is a very complete and representative collection of pilgrims' signs. Although many of them are made of a soft metal, there are others of good copper and brass. At one time they must have been very plentiful, for very prolific have the finds been in the neighbourhood of London Bridge and in and around Southwark. These signs or badges were secured and worn by the pilgrims who set out to the chief shrines, notably that of St. Thomas À Becket at Canterbury. Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales has told that there were many traders in pilgrim signs in Canterbury city, so that all were enabled to possess themselves of such symbols, many of which they threw upon the shrine, and others retained them as talismans against danger on the return journey. The pilgrims wore a variety of emblems—the more devout, it is said, preferred the cross; others carried with them on their journey little metal figures of St. George, St. Katherine, St. Christopher, or other saint with his or her symbol. St. Agnes was represented by a lamb, St. John by an eagle, and St. Dorothy by a basket of fruit. Perhaps the most favoured sign purchased in Canterbury was an equestrian figure of St. Thomas À Becket. Some of the emblems were worn as protectors against evil, and such signs were almost invariably on horse trappings; indeed, such amulets have been perpetuated almost up to the present day. There are several circular discs in the museum referred to, said to date from the twelfth century, upon these are embossed two horned animals; another badge of a little later date, in copper, has upon it a shield of arms surrounded by three mythical dragons; it was found in Ludgate Hill. Yet another on which is a shield charged with seven stars, said to be of fourteenth-century workmanship, was found some time ago on the site of the old General Post Office in St Martin's-le-Grand.

The retainers of noblemen wore private badges by which they were known; these were mostly of brass or bronze, and sometimes they were gilded. They were frequently worn when on a journey as a passport. Such badges in the form of circles and lozenges were usually furnished with a loop for suspension, and became well known. They served a similar purpose to the distinctive livery of later days.

Ornamental Trinkets.

The household ornaments, trinkets, and little articles of personal adornment which have been preserved tell not only of female vanity but of masculine love of ornament. It would appear that the use of bronze lingered on for centuries after it had nominally been displaced by brass; especially was that the case in decorative objects and metal ornament. The metals known as bronze, copper, and brass are, however, much intermixed in their use.

The objects which can be collected include brooches, rings, pins, needles, bodkins, and thimbles of brass. Buckles are very numerous, and varied in form; some are heart-shaped, others have ends cut out to form a trefoil and are decorated with a pierced fleur-de-lis. The story of the pin, the smallest and yet the most used metal object preserved, is very interesting. At one time it was made by hand from brass wire, the head being twisted round and round until it had the appearance of a solid knob. The Pinners were in years gone by an important guild, and in 1376 returned two men to the Common Council of London. In the reign of Henry VII an Act of Parliament was passed compelling the Pinners to solder fast to the shank the head of the pin, and directing that the pin itself should be "smooth, rounded, filed, and sharpened." Very laborious indeed must have been the making of pins in those days. There were pins, however, of an earlier date, for it is recorded that on one occasion when the men of Athens had gone out to battle only one returned. He was met by an infuriated mob of women, who were so enraged at the loss of their husbands that Herodotus tells us they pulled the pins out from their garments and stabbed him to death. There were bronze pins in Rome, too, and we are told that even the safety-pin of to-day is by no means new, for among the collectable objects in brass are prehistoric safety-pins.

Half a century ago, when little girls went to school they carried with them the inevitable pin poppet, some of which receptacles for pins and other similar sundries were of wood, but many were brass; some met with among old metal curios are quite handsomely decorated. Another indispensable object is the button, so many of which are of metal, many decorative, some inscribed, and others ornamented with portraits. There are little brass sleeve-links, worn in Tudor days, to be met with, and some curious brass studs which were worn by men in the shirt fronts of the early Georgian period. There are clasps of purses and books and casket mounts of brass, some of which date back to the fifteenth century. The older mounts of purses, so-called, would be more correctly described as the mounts of gipcieres; the gipciere was a kind of pouch formerly worn at the girdle; the name is also spelled gipser:

Sometimes the mounts were inscribed with mottoes; one found in Brooks' Wharf, London, believed to be of fourteenth-century workmanship, is inscribed "CREATOREM CELI ET TERRE ET IN IESVM." Other objects in brass are girdle ends, some of which are shaped like acorns and others are of ivy-leaf design. Among ornamental bronzes which can be worn, and in larger sizes hung upon the wall, there are plaques, many of the earliest being copied from antique gems. Plaquettes in bronze were common in the sixteenth century.

Arms and Armour.

A volume might well be taken up with describing mediÆval arms and armour. It is true iron and steel are the chief metals in the making of weapons, but brass and bronze are closely allied with some of the armaments of war. Many of the small mediÆval cannon were of brass, and not a few of the guns, or "hand cannon," were of that metal.

In the days of Elizabeth the musketeer carried, in addition to an unwieldy weapon, his flask of powder, touch-box, and burning match. The match-box was a tube of copper pierced with small holes, and in it the lighted match could be conveyed safely. The powder-horn was at first of real horn, but in time it became a copper flask. Many of the old flasks were exceedingly ornate, and were often ornamented with hunting scenes worked up in repoussÉ on the copper sides. The spur-makers were important craftsmen in early days, and under the name of the Guild of Loriners ranked with the City companies. It is true that the spur rowels of six, eight, or even twelve points were generally of iron, but the collector of metal finds many interesting specimens made entirely of brass. One pair of spurs in the reign of Henry VIII consist of fourteen brass points, the neck of the rowel being shaped like a peacock and embossed with brass rosettes. Our finest collection of armour and of ceremonial metal-work—that splendid collection which dates from quite early times, finding its greatest strength and massive grandeur in late mediÆval days and its artistic ornament in the richly damascened armour of lesser weight of the Stuarts—is rightly housed in that greatest of English strongholds, the Tower of London. It is there that the antiquary and the archÆologist love to wander, and in the vast recesses of those dungeons and prison-like towers read history. There is an abundance of metal everywhere. Guns and cannon and mortars of historic fame lie about in the open. The Bloody Tower, nearly opposite the Traitors' Gate, the Middle Tower, the Byward Tower, and many others of equal interest may be seen. To some the Regalia with its crowns, swords, and sceptres of state, ampulla, spoon, salt-cellars, maces, and orders of merit, are the greatest attraction. The curio collector, however, finds his way to the museum and admires and perhaps envies the quaint and curious guns, powder-horns, and trophies of war. He is in the midst of the England of the Middle Ages, with its jousts and tournaments, shut out by the thick walls of the White Tower from the hurry and bustle of the traffic and commerce of the twentieth century.

The magnificent armour in Hertford House—the Wallace collection—is a delight to those who love to see in arms and armour the perfection of beauty of ornament and decoration. There are splendid suits which look as bright as the day when they were new. The half-suit of armour of Italian workmanship made for Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara, inlaid and damascened with gold and silver, is said to be the finest in Europe. The staging of this splendid collection was carried out by Mr. Guy Laking, the Keeper of the King's Armour and Custodian of the London Museum.

A fitting conclusion to this chapter is, surely, a tribute to the armourers and founders and smiths of the Middle Ages, who worked so conscientiously and made their work lasting. It has retained its beauty and much of its ancient finish, notwithstanding atmospheric influences; indeed, some of it gained added beauty by oxidation.

VI
LATER
METAL-WORK