File:Medieval clasp (FindID 747109).jpg

English: An incomplete copper-alloy plate almost certainly from a medieval clasp. Half of the plate survives here, following a transverse break at the fold. The plate is sub-rectangular, with no frame recesses at the fold. There is a decoratively shaped attachment end, now slightly damaged but originally with four triangular cut-outs which would have created five knops, including those at the corners. Two knops have been broken off towards one of the corners (old damage). Engraved angled lines at the base of each knop emphasise each protrusion on the front.

The front is decorated within a very straight engraved border line towards each long edge; it looks as if this was done against a straight edge. Dots are drilled at intervals along the border grooves, sometimes missing the line, and there are more crudely grooved short transverse lines or nicks outside the border lines. Sometimes the dots are successfully placed at the junction of the nicks with the border line. Within the border, set off centre, and also closer to the frame end than the attachment end, is a double engraved circle, apparently compass-drawn; the outer of the two circles is interrupted by one of the border lines, so must have been added after the border line.

Such compass-engraved decoration is known across dress and book accessories and is discussed by Egan and Pritchard (2002, 31). As with a clasp plate illustrated in Egan and Pritchard (2002, 118; no. 551), there are five holes within the inner of the circles. They are arranged in a cross shape, with one at the centre (known as a 'quincunx' pattern. Probably intended to be blind holes, two have been drilled right through the plate. These holes are larger than the rest of the dots.

There are more punched dots decorating the circles: a fairly neat ring of 16 dots between the two circles, and groups of three, arranged in triangles, between each of the 'blind' holes in the quincunx.

There appear to be five rivet holes on the plate, including three towards the corners, with a fourth further in from its corner. The rivet holes at the corners of the attachment end are surrounded by a decorative ring of dots, six around one hole and seven around the other. A further probable rivet hole sits between those at the attachment end. Separate, flat expanded headed copper-alloy rivets survive in holes at the frame end, and these appear curiously crude. Although copper-alloy rivet shafts are present in the holes at the corners of the attachment end, they have lost their heads. The other hole is empty.

At the break the fold is slightly expanded to accommodate a frame; the lack of a hole for a pin suggests that this was the plate of a clasp, perhaps from a book or a strap, rather than anything else, but the frame recesses normal on a plate from a clasp are absent. The object has corroded to a mid-dark green colour. In profile it has been twisted slightly. It measures 38.8 by 26.8 by 1.0mm thick, and weighs 7.73g.

The extent of decorative detailing is hard to parallel on dress accessories with similar compass engraving. Similar decoration on book clasps can be found on BERK-87202E and NMS-9F7A90, making a function as a book clasp plate perhaps most likely.