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Knife handle (manche de couteau) (Drawing)

Knife handle (manche de couteau) (Drawing)
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Front, detail

Subject
Secular.

Repository Institution
www.pkc.gov.uk

To purchase an image
pradair@pkc.gov.uk


Perth, Perth Museum and Art Gallery

Inv. A11-0013

Walrus ivory

Height: 120.5 mm
Width: 22.6 mm
Depth: 14.5 mm
Weight: 35.71 g

Green man or satyr; foliated decoration.

Hall 2001: 14th century.


Attribution
Unknown

Reverse
Carved in the round.

Object Condition
Chip at the front, above the forehead.

Comments
The iconography has been interpreted as a Maying celebrant wearing a hood and holding leaves by Hall (see Hall 2001).

Provenance
Found in Perth High Street during 1975-1977 excavations in a context dated to the early 14th century.

Bibliography
N. Q. Bogdan, The Perth High Street Excavations 1976-77: Final Interim Report (Perth, 1992), pp. 7-8.
P. Yeoman, Medieval Scotland: an Archeological Perspective (London, 1995), p. 13, ill. 56.
M. A. Hall, 'An Ivory Knife Handle from the High Street, Perth, Scotland: Consuming Ritual in a Medieval Burgh', in Medieval Archaeology 45 (2001), pp. 169-188.
M. A. Hall, ‘Cultural Interaction in the Medieval Burgh of Perth, Scotland 1200-1600’, in Centre, Region, Periphery – Medieval Europe, ed. by G. Helmig, B. Scholkmann and M. Untermann (Basel, 2002), Vol. 1, pp. 290-301 (pp. 294-295).
M. A. Hall, ‘Burgh Mentalities, A Town-in-the Country Case Study of Perth, Scotland’, in Town and Country in the Middle Ages – Contrasts and Interconnections 1100-1500, ed. by K. Giles and C. Dyer (Leeds, 2005), pp. 211-228 (pp. 217-219).
M. A. Hall, ’Anthropomorphic ivory handle’, in Perth High Street Archaeological Excavations 1975-1977, ed. by C. Smith et al., Fascicule 4: Living and Working in a Medieval Scottish Burgh, Environmental Remains and Miscellaneous Finds (Perth, 2011), pp. 97-116 (pp. 102-103, no. 45 and ill. 52).


Image

© Perth Museum and Art Gallery, Perth & Kinross Council, Scotland. Drawn by D. Munro (SUAT Ltd).

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