MEDIEVAL MINIATURE OBJECT

1400

Tiny miniature ?hammer made from copper alloy. It has a broken-off oval-section shaft (fresh break) passing through a central squarish boss decorated with two vertical lines on either side. Around the shaft, below the boss, is a collar; above is a tapering, slightly curved spike whose cross-section has been filed into a rough hexagon. This may be a continuation of the shaft. To one side of the boss is a flaring cone with circular section and 6.5 mm flat end, probably intended as a hammer-head. It is decorated with two circumferential grooves. To the other side of the boss is a rectangular-section projection with bevelled edges nearest to the boss, then a narrow projecting lobe, then a wider (almost lozengiform) projecting lobe, then the arm ends in a D-shaped lobe. This all combines to represent an ornate axe with a curved blade. The entire object measures only 31 mm from hammer-head to axe blade. A similar small copper-alloy hammer is known from Great Glemham (sf738/6488). It is just possible that they are smokers' tools; a rather larger hammer-like smoker's tool was found in an early 17th-century context in Amsterdam (Baart no. 686) and this also has spikes and claws for cleaning out the pipe. The hammer-head was presumably used as a tamper. A rather larger example from Norfolk, however, was identified by the British Museum as a metalworking hammer of the 15th or 16th century. The oblique filemarks covering much of the surface of the Orford hammer are characteristic of the medieval and early post-medieval period.