POST MEDIEVAL PLAQUE

1700

Decorated plaque with no means of attachment surviving. The object is heavy and dark grey in colour, and may be made from a lead/copper or lead-tin alloy. It is basically flat and sub-rectangular, with all the edges and corners rounded and looking as if a die had been pressed into a blob of soft ?melted metal. The relief decoration is on one face only, and consists of a naked copulating couple standing under a tree to the right as you look at it. One of the woman's legs is raised and held by the man around his waist. A rather lumpy raised border to the top of the plaque may be the branches of the tree. To the left of the figures is a straight narrow border ridge but there is no border to the right and the edge of the plaque follows the curved shape of the tree trunk. At the bottom is a short projection with a moulded collar, which has a rounded and apparently unbroken end. On the flat reverse are two engraved letters reading 'LI', the L neatly engraved with triangular serifs but the I apparently unfinished. What this plaque may have been used for is a mystery, and its date is also uncertain. The drawing of the figures is rather good but the manufacture of the plaque itself is poor. Jude Plouviez has suggested that a mould could have been made from a Roman original (this type of standing copulating scene, usually with a skirted woman, is known from the Roman world) but we both agree that the plaque itself is probably 19th century when some quite odd pornographic items such as pipe-tampers were produced. The lettering does not help in assigning a date as this style of lettering was used throughout the post-medieval period. We have scanned both faces of the object because it is so odd.