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This bronze chape (3cm across at the top) would have been the bottom mount of a scabbard, probably for a dagger, typically one of the classic left-hand daggers so often seen on portraits of the period with the pommel peeping out on the other side to that of the rapier. Decoration on 17th-century pieces tends to be much simpler. Scabbard elements from 16th-century daggers simply didn't survive in any quantity, so river-find material is often the only evidence of what they looked like. It has been cleaned, using acid or a wire mop perhaps, but some of the original river deposit is still within the piece. The condition is otherwise as you would expect from a river-find piece, but there is also a 1cm crack to the face of the chape. |