Kosher Food Lead Seal, Plumba
Kosher, PP, Seal, Image & Found by Plodite.
Found near Maidstone in Kent, 27.46mm, 5.11g.
Incomplete Kosher food seal with Hebrew letters on both sides of the terminal disc.
See Geoff Egan, No.356 Fig.47, 'Lead cloth seals and related items in the B.M. (B.M. Occasional Paper 93)'
See BM examples
An excellent article entitled 'Those Jewish Plumbas: All is Revealed!' can be found on page 1 of the March/April issue, No.82 of Leaden Tokens Telegraph by David Powell.
"We have discussed these pieces briefly before, but I am grateful to Ira Rezak for the following explanation
of the inscription, and for giving some clue as to their use. My thanks also to Howard Simmons,
for putting me in touch with him.
“In Yiddish they're called plumbas (ie "leads") and they are definitely some sort of kosher
seal. The way the pictures show the text, the right side has three Hebrew letters: aleph, bet,
dalet (ABD) which stands for av bet din ("Chief of the (Rabbinical) Court"). the left hand side
is less distinct but almost certainly says dalet, kuf, kuf (DKK) which stands for de kehillah kedosha
("of the Holy Community" = ie of the town). The city being referenced is not given, but
presumably it was obvious to those local users who respected the validity of the kosher mark.
It is probably from Amsterdam, or another Dutch export site, and likely dates to the late 18th
or early 19th cent.
The letters in the centre are different; I recognize at least three differing letters, and these no
doubt represent different suppliers of whatever the merchandise was.”
Ira goes on to show an illustration of one such plumba in its original form, with the following further
comment:
“….{the piece} was found in some eastern English coastal port, I forget which, but still shows
the more complete butterfly shape that would have allowed this to be attached by compression,
probably to a string around the product. What the product was is not clear to me, the likeliest
candidates are wine, cheese or meat.”
There are also some other specimens on Stuart Elton’s excellent “Ourpasthistory” site, both with and
without the joining spur; go to “http://ourpasthistory.com/Gallerya/main.php” [to be updated], then just put “Jewish”
into the search parameter. A similar explanation of their use is given there, except that the use is assumed
to be in connection with the London meat market, the Continent not being mentioned. Both
sources agree on 18th cent as a likely date, although BNJ54 {1984} features two specimens in with its
type S lead tokens, which are mid-17th cent.
Perhaps all three sources are right; that the continent exported Kosher meat to London, and that such
trade was flourishing throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. That issue perhaps we are uncertain
on, but at least we know to call them plumbas rather than plummas from now on!"
See also, Nieuwkoop: loden, Metaaldetector vondsten © 2016, Jan van Oostveen for a detailed treatise on kosher seals found in the Western Netherlands, South Holland.
More seals in the British Museum.
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