Wire or Metalwork Seal, Eagle Displayed

Wire or Metalwork Seal, Eagle Displayed, Image & Found Jason Sandy.
Found on Thames foreshore, 32mm.

Shield bearing crossed spoons impaled with a cauldron // eagle displayed

These type of seals are sigle discs (often cast in moulds with misaligned halves) having an attachment loop at the top (often missing or distorted as here) through which a wire attached them to rods or other metal work (often bronze vessels such as cauldrons, see BSG.OS.00023).

Here is an interesting link showing the seals still attached to bundles of wire (rods) from a, probable 17th century, ship wreck, Terschelling and Schat aangespoeld op Terschelling.

These seals are known from a number of European countries including Sweden, Germany (especially Hamburg - see Geoff Egan, Lead Cloth Seals and Related Items in the British Museum Occasional Paper 93, p.122.) and the Netherlands. It is not yet known where this one is from. See a parallel at PAS LON-9485E4.

This seal is also recorded as PAS LON-A5684C, which ascribes these seals to Aachen based on Mitchiner.

See also Hanger, Simon Bont for a related seal, and Handelslood, Bondemvondstenwereld for a thread about them.

See Allex Kussendrager, Handels-, merk-, messing-, koper- of eigendomsloden, loodjes met een draagoog, m.u.v. laken- pinneloden. for a large collection of them, which include some with very similar markings to this seal.