POST MEDIEVAL THIMBLE

Unknown artist

Silver thimble, missing its domed top, now flattened in shape and open along its original soldered join. Plain border demarcated by engraved lines, the body covered with waffle-shaped indentations applied on a lathe, leaving blank a small area in which are roughly incised the owner's initials, MA. A maker's mark, apparently IB above a pellet, is also stamped into the sheet, now very worn. Length: 1.2 cm.Form, facture and engraving suggest a late 17th C or possibly early 18th C date, but cannot be proven to be pre- 1706 and may not therefore fall within the scope of the Treasure Act. An identical maker's mark appears on two similar thimbles sold from the collection of the thimble historian, Edwin Holmes, at Christie's South Kensington, 31 May 1995, lots 63- 64, there dated to the early 18th C. The regular indentations recall Henry Power's observation in his book, Experimental Philiosophy, London 1664, 1, 5. "The common fly…her eyes are…most neatly dimpled with innumerable little cavities like a small grater or thimble." The find can not be securely dated to pre-1706 and as such falls outside the provisions of the Treasure Act 1996.