End of Month Round Up — October 2019

October has been an exciting but frustrating month for me. Finds wise, it has not been anywhere near so productive as September was, and I guess that is only because I have not been out so very much.

Other concerns have taken over!

However, let's look at what finds I have made this month and try to make some sort of sense out of them.

The toy production of Polly's Parlour has slowed down somewhat. Actually, it's not that the finds of toys have slowed down, but rather that the size of them has diminished. I am still finding them but except for a brass teetotum (shown above alongside a very early example in ivory), all the rest have been small fragments of hollow-cast Victorian pewter equestrian examples. 

I have found another horses' arse since the picture below was taken...

I have to say that the production of shirt buttons from Polly's Parlour has fallen hugely as has the production of silver items. This is cause for concern. I have used the XP ADX130 there throughout the month but not once the Laser B1. What this might mean is that the XP is just not such a good machine when it comes to sites that are laced with iron debris. 

The two examples at the bottom were found elsewhere. 

I cannot blame the machine for not finding silver — except for the find of a Sterling silver watch casing, maybe I just failed to walk over other items made from it? However, when using the Laser B1 during September I was finding shirt buttons each and every visit and in number. By the end of September, I had amassed an 'accidental' collection of thirteen examples and saw no reason why the trend should peter out. The XP, by comparison, has only given me another on every other visit throughout the month and so I have added only another three to what I once thought would be an ever-growing collection.

These buttons are about the same size as Medieval pennies are ... 

I once had a site that over time produced eleven short cross pennies in total and a few cut coins also.  I had to work hard for them but was always completely confident that if one of these coins was in range then the B1 would find it even if it was on edge. It's so very important to trust your detector to do this for you ...

This is not a good sign! 

I think, therefore, that the Laser B1 lives up to its reputation as a formidable machine. It is one that excels with very small items and is also one that is still capable of beating modern detectors on busy and trashy sites. 

No fool would ever sell one, and I am not one of those! 

I did find a number of odd artefacts. Above is a fragment of something that I cannot quite imagine. It's in bronze or brass or latten or bell metal, or something. It is too clean to be ancient — however it looks to be so, does it not?

Length - 37mm.

It can keep. The truth will out!

Two items found within a few feet of each other (with the B1) would prove to be the most interesting things that I would discover on an organised dig down in Berkshire. One is a small base-silver mount (about the same size as a Saxon sceat) that could be Medieval — or anything really! It has no means of attachment on the reverse, which is simply hollow, and therefore it must have been inset into a recess in wood, maybe leather or even another metal and attached by a mastic.

The other item is an equally confusing thing. It is decorated with the same design on both sides, therefore it is almost certainly part of a handle that would be viewed from both sides.

But it is the handle from what? A mirror, a spoon, a ladle, a frying pan. Who knows?

I have no idea ...

Lastly was an inscrutable object that looked all the world like a Medieval folding mirror case when discovered covered in wet and sloppy mud on a rainy October day out and about in the deer park of a moated house. The XP proved itself capable on this old pasture field and I had no doubt that it would pull up items at great depths. 

It was very quiet and signals few and far between, however, almost all were from worthwhile finds and only a few were from trash items. Most of these finds were coins once lost along an old footpath. Dating from the 18th till the early 20th century, they were all pretty deep down in the topsoil at between six and ten inches. The subsoil itself was found only twelve inches below the surface and so I doubt that it has ever been ploughed. 

When I moved away from the footpath then signals became very thin on the ground indeed. But then I came to an area — a low but noticeable hump — when iron chatter began and here and there I got signals from larger iron objects. Clearly, I'd found a place where something had gone on in the past. That is where the mystery object came from. I went back to see if I could find the other half of it but failed to. It will be a shame if I never do because I think that it will provide a solution to the problem of identification. 

What the hell it really is,  I just don't know.

It's the right size and is in the form of a mirror case. However, it is not one of those, I think.

But it's a folding thingy of some kind ...

I reckon!

Gaming Pieces — When Playing At Teetotum

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Children’s Games - 1560 

In Pieter Breugel's 1560 painting, Children's Games, wherever you may look there are vignettes of children playing the sorts of games that children played in the mid-16th Century.  In the top left of the picture beneath the arches of a building, are a group of girls whipping spinning tops with lengths of cord attached to the ends of sticks and they are doing this in order to keep them spinning just as long as possible. 

In the bottom left of the scene, there's a little girl holding up a spinning top — however, this kind of top had a different purpose. This type was designed to be held by its tip and spun through the torque provided by a sharp snap between thumb and forefinger, would spin only as long as this energy lasted, and would eventually slow down, wobble around the point of its spindle, and then topple on its side.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Children’s Games - 1560 (detail)

Her spinning top is actually a gaming piece for a 'put-and-take' game — a 'teetotum'. It has four sides each of which would have been marked with a character and each of these was a command. Whichever facet of the cube was face up when spinning finally stopped and the top fell, then that character told what you must do next ...

By sheer good fortune, I once found such a top laying upon the Thames Foreshore which because of its form and the style of its engraved characters may indeed be of similar date to the Bruegel painting. It is made of ivory (stained a mahogany-brown colour during long burial) and each of its four faces is engraved with a single character ~ 

Excuse my mucky fingers! The brass teetotum cleaned up well despite its heavy encrustations. 

The teetotum is supposed to have originated in Ancient Rome (though I cannot find a picture of a surviving example) when the characters were the following and had these Latin meanings  ~

A. Accipe unum [take from the pool] 

D. Donato alium [add to the pool] 

N. Nihil [nothing] 

T. Totum [take the whole pool].

My post-medieval example with the characters A-H-N-P had similar meanings ~

A. Take all

H. Take half

N. Take nothing

P.  Put stake

There are later depictions of such tops and the example spinning around on the table in Chardin's 'Boy with a Top' 1738, also looks similar in style to the Thames example and is probably also a teetotum ...

Jean Siméon Chardin, Boy with a Spinning-Top or Child with a Teetotum — 1738 

It appears that the toy and its eponymous game enjoys periods when it becomes something of a craze. This was so during the 18th Century when 'teetotum' was a popular parlour game that had even the family of King George III hooked ...

Lord Mulgrave delivering important news to the King observed ~

“Their majesties were playing at teetotum for the enormous stake of some pins. His majesty received his lordship with his accustomed affability, and said, “You see I am at last turned gambler, but I hope I have too much sense to risk a crown upon the throw of a dice.”

As you can see, at this time there was a distinction between the teetotum, with which you might play for pins — and dice, with which you might play for hard cash. However, whilst playing a harmless game of chance with his wife and children the king freely admits that when 'playing at teetotum' — gambling is what it is and gambler is what he becomes — and quips that he only hopes that he'll never take the (political?) risk of losing his 'crown' by it. 

The Early 20th Century brass example found at Polly's Parlour last week is hexagonal and carries six commands ~

1. Take all

2. Take two

3. Put one

4. All put

5. Take one

6. Put two

The teetotum enjoyed another period of popularity during those times.  Although it appears that the device was still widely regarded then as a toy fit for children's play, in America, where the playing of 'put and take' again reached craze proportions, the teetotum was soon outlawed in many states and for good reason ... 

Soon, it was also deemed a fit tool for proper gambling — and of course, when that becomes the case, then cheats and swindlers will set to work. The picture below is of two gentlemen playing for what is clearly cash money. However, this picture also explains that the top could be ingeniously made to weight outcomes in one's favour, or indeed in another's disfavour with a crafty push or pull of the spindle ...  

And so I have a second teetotum in my collection and from a site that appears to have been a popular local venue in Edwardian times. Exactly what this place was popular for is unclear at the moment but the evidence continues to accumulate, however, I cannot seem to find any direct evidence of the presence of womenfolk. Unless I count the pair of toy deer as the evidence of girls at play then everything found at Polly's Parlour thus far shouts only 'men and boys' at play.

But playing at what and playing for what, exactly?