Cloth Seal, French, Nimes Silk Serge Seal, Image by StuE, Found by John GM.
Found on Thames foreshore, 12mm, 1.2g.
Crocodile chained to a palm tree with C(OL) N(EM) to sides // inscription (clothiers name?) around design largely missing due to hole
Appears to be a single disc seal but with long projection easily mistaken for a connecting strip and may indeed have been part of a joining loop that originally rejoined the seal in the recess shown on the clothiers name side. This small, lightweight seal would have been suitable for attaching to silk cloths either by the lead loop proposed above or tied through the hole punched in its middle.
See No.346 Fig.46, Geoff Egan,Lead cloth seals and related items in the British Museum (B.M.occ.papers 93), "palm tree and crocodile, COL NE(M) to sides, NIMES below // fleur-de-lis, PIERRE LARNAC around ..... The abbreviation stands for Colonia Nemauensis, the Latin name for Nimes, and the main device is the city's arms (these refer to the foundation of the original Roman colonia at Nimes by army veterans from Egypt). ... a similar seal of an early eighteenth-century Nimes maker of silk stockins and cloth, David Baumer, was found in a wreck off eastern Mexico."
