Lead Cloth Seals and Related Items in the British Museum: Department of Medieval and Later Antiquities (Occasional Paper). This item is unavailable.Lead Cloth Seals and Related Items in the British Museum: Department of Medieval and Later Antiquities (Occasional Paper)

Stamped lead seals were widely used in the European textile industry during the late-medieval/early-modern period, attached to individual cloths as part of a system of industrial regulation and quality control. The survival of large numbers of the seals, many dating from the period that was crucial to the development of the draperies, was not widely appreciated until recently, even among textile historians. Recent finds have provided a great deal of new information, from which it is possible to learn significant details about the commodity which became England's single most important manufacture. This catalogue publishes over 350 cloth seals and matrices from England and the Continent in the British Museum, and includes an introduction to their use and significance.