Cloth Seal, Cloth Worker's Personal Seal, Privy Mark, TM, Image by StuE, Found by Nasher.
Found near Baldock, Hertfordshire, 21mm, 9.5g.
Privy mark T M to sides // 61 / 20 scratched
Cloth worker's personal seal with privy mark formed from the figure 4 with extended vertical sitting on XX, the crude C in front is an aberration from the rivet. The numbers scratched on to the other disc are usually the length and weight of the cloth.
See Geoff Egan, Lead cloth seals and related items in the B.M., B.M. Occasional Paper 93, p.78, "Clothiers', weavers' & searchers' seals with privy marks etc." No.220, Fig.31 he tentatively dates as late eighteenth century to early nineteenth based on style but No.241, Fig.32 is judged to be "(?)sixteenth- to eighteenth-century." Both of these have a privy mark based on the number 4 resting on XX and an initial to the sides of the 4's extended vertical. There are differences in the style of the figures and border but it is hard to be certain of them, particularly on the average worn and incompletely struck seal. The same format of privy mark is found on London Dyers' Company seals, No.267, Fig.35 (ibid) and these are dated more closely from the late sixteenth- to seventeenth centuries. Assuming the entire date range is the safest if not the most definitive course of action, 1500 - 1825.
