POST MEDIEVAL TOY

1500

Post Medieval 1500 to 1700AD cast lead or lead alloy inscribed tablet, a miniature horn book showing the alphabet. Line 1 is - ABCDE; Line 2 is - FGHIK; Line 3 is - LMNOP; Line 4 is - QRSTV; Line 5 is - WXYZ; The last line is a square hatched border, three squares high and eleven squares wide. Based on the contents and style of the alphabet, probably dates to between c1500 and c1700 AD.The length is 44mm, width 32mm, thickness 4mm, and the weight 27.95g.Similar objects on the database include SOM-5408E1, YORYM-FA8FF1, LVPL-69A2E4, SWYOR-B234D7, and NMGW-E9EC71(nearly complete).Full-size horn books were teaching tablets that usually contained the alphabet or the Lord's Prayer and which became available during the 16th century. Although the term 'horn book' is commonly used for lead tablets, it is a slightly misleading name. True horn books were made out of wood onto which the printed paper would have been mounted, and then covered with a thin sheet of transparent horn for protection. The lead tablets are far smaller, and would probably have been either toys (Lewis 2012, 98-101) or cheaper versions of the full-size hornbooks.