Last Friday, Rollo @sparkes_inthemud and I travelled to Dorset to visit Master Arrowsmith and Fletcher, Will Sherman @medievalarrows . Both Rollo and I have found Medieval arrow head on the Thames foreshore. Will saw these and generously offered to make us replicas at his forge. He invited us into a simple stone-walled building with an earth floor, central hearth and chimney. This has been a forge for hundreds of years and Will continues to work in this space in the same way as generations of smiths have done before him. The same material, wrought iron, is shaped with the same tools, heated with the same fuel made hotter with air blown through hand operated bellows. Like all master craftspeople Will works with an ease and economy of effort that makes the task look easy. In about 5 minutes a plain bar is transformed into an arrow through a sequence of flattening, rolling to make the socket and then cutting to a length and shaping to a point to finish. The video shows the last stage of this process, delicate adjustments to make sure the shape is good before it was quenched in water and handed to me, complete, perfect with no need for grinding or filing. The still photographs show my find alongside Will’s replica, then mine and Rollo’s arrow heads, a handful of similar arrow heads Will has made for a customer and finally finished arrows near a shuttered window in the forge. This is the nearest experience to time travel I think I have had. It was such a privilege to witness Will at work. Thank you.
Here are some photographs of my display at Watermen’s Hall a week after the event. Over 40 mudlarks showed their collections during the weekend and hundreds of people came to see what we have found on the Thames Foreshore. These events organised by @handsonhistorymudlarks demand a lot of from all involved but give back so much. They help shape the idea of community amongst Thames mudlarks and give us an opportunity to share our knowledge and enthusiasm. As a result lost and broken objects are made visible and significant, carriers of stories and a tangible connection to the history of London. Special thanks to @jasonmudlark and @mudika.thames for organising, all the volunteers who brought us coffee and cake, Watermen’s Hall for providing an amazing historic venue to show in and @charlie.collects for walking up that hill with me at the end of the day. Photograph of that moment by @alicelfreeman , who also made sure I was heading in the right direction at the end of a long day. Thanks also to @shellsbell_larking my table-neighbour and portrait photographer.
I did not recognise this foreshore find straight away. In fact I don’t know what made me single it out amongst the rusted nails and other iron that surrounded it . Only after I took it home and looked at it closely did I began to realise it was an arrow head. This was confirmed when I showed it to Stuart Wyatt the London Finds Liason Officer. The tip has broken off but what is truly amazing ix that part of the wooden shaft is still visible in the socket. Swipe to see more photographs of the arrow including one with the missing tip drawn in. This type of arrow without barbs is called a bodkin head arrow and was designed to pierce chain mail and armour. Swipe to see three arrow heads in the London Museum collection of the same type. These examples are dated to the 13th / 14th centuries. It would be amazing but not impossible if my find was as old. See it along with my other finds at Watermen’s Hall tomorrow. Details on last two slides.
Here is an assortment of finds from a single visit to the foreshore a few weeks ago. There is Second World War shrapnel, an eye from a German salt-glaze Bartmann bottle, a sherd of 17th century tin glaze pottery and there, in the middle, my favourite find of the day; a bone fid. Fids were used to separate strands of rope when splicing or loosening knots. This fid was made in the simplest possible way, taking a bone, cutting it at 90 degrees at one end and at a diagonal at the other end. It was finished off by drilling a hole at the squared off end, possibly to suspend the tool when it was not in use. The hole that runs longitudinally is natural and part of the bone’s structure. I decided to make a replica using a bone from the foreshore. Swipe to see the results. I used s metapodial bone, probably from a sheep. The original used a bone with more slender proportions, maybe from another animal. I will be showing the found fid and the replica at Watermen’s Hall tomorrow. Details on last two slides. Free entry ; hope to see you there.
My favourite 9 finds from the Thames foreshore in 2025. Hard to say why, but I have only posted about two of these finds during the year. You can go back and see posts about the two Medieval tiles but will have to wait for individual posts about the other seven. Meanwhile here is a list of what they are.
Top row left to right.
1. The base of a Roman Samian ware bowl stamped REBBVRI.OF.
2. A Roman bone hairpin and part of a Roman cosmetic palette made in stone. A wooden replica is below. Three Roman tesserae found in previous years are there to add a splash of colour.
3. A knife handle dated circa 1450 by Graham DuHeaume.
Middle row left to right.
4. An almost complete Roman black burnished ware bowl with lattice decoration.
5. A honestone / whetstone. Probably Medieval or Tudor.
6. Medieval encaustic tile depicting a head disgorging foliage.
Bottom row left to right.
7. A piece of Roman mortarium rim with a partial stamp reading CIT. This would have read FECIT and was the counter stamp used by the potter Matugenus in the 2nd century.
8. Medieval encaustic tile with one and a half very worn lions. The drawing shows how I imagine the tile looked when new.
9. A large chunk of Post Medieval Redware pottery. I have been researching this one for a while now and I can say with some confidence that this is part of an apple roaster. Definitely needs a post of its own to explain more.
Placing 4 Roman tesserae below the gallery floor at No. 1 Poultry with the aid of a mirror in a trug. Tesserae like these were found when Roman buildings were excavated on this site in 1995. These buildings were located 5 metres below street level and luckily for me the height of the gallery ceiling is 5 metres above floor level. The mirror converts 5 metres up to 5 metres down placing the tesserae where they belong.
This work is part of the ‘ Messages from a Silent River’ exhibition at No. 1 Poultry. Three more days to see it, today Friday and Saturday 12 to 6 each day. See previous posts and @ground__collective page for more deatails.
The latest group exhibition by the mighty Ground Collective @ground_collective has opened at a very special location, No. 1 Poultry, right at the centre of the City of London’s square mile. I am showing three bodies of work, photographs of stacked tesserae, the tesserae themselves arranged along the edge of shelves and small stoneware pots shown on the food counter of this ex-cafe. 114 Roman Era tesserae, all found on the Thames foreshore, are arranged on 4 shelves. Each one was hand cut nearly 2000 years ago, no two the same. Together they remind me of a city skyline or a row of battered teeth.
4 more tesserae are arranged on a mirror in a trug. A cast of these tesserae is stuck on the ceiling 5 metres above ground level. In the mirror they appear to be 5 metres below ground level, exactly the level at which Roman remains were found during archaeological excavations at this site.
The photographic series ‘Building Blocks’ shows the tesserae stacked on a sloping ground plane to form walls and towers. The photographs have been cropped, rotating the slope to form a horizontal. Consequently the towers and walls lean at impossible angles, seemingly on the verge of collapse.
The bowls have been made by rolling clay against various surfaces including sand, reeds, Medieval tiles and sawn wood. They freeze a moment of making when two materials met. They are inspired by pottery finds from the foreshore that also carry such evidence of the moment they were created.
This is a gallery space today, it was a cafe a few years ago and the site of an archeological dig in the 1990s as No. 1 Poultry was built. Below this floor further layers; a Medieval cemetery, a series of Roman era buildings near the place that the main East West Road crossed the Walbrook. And covering the floors of those buildings the exact same type of tesserae that are now on the shelves and in the photographs. The exhibition continues Wednesday to Saturday, 12 to 6 this week and next. I will be there, invigilating, this Thursday.
I am very happy to be showing work in Messages from a Silent River, an exhibition by @ground__collective artists in Hypha Gallery 2, located at no. 1 Poultry, EC2R 8EN. The exhibition is open this week and next, Wednesday to Saturday 12 to 6.
A serving counter, a high table running along the window and spaces for chiller cabinets evidence the gallery’s previous use as a cafe. Each artist has found a way respond to these features. It is far from being a neutral white cube and the floor to ceiling glass wall that faces the street means that the light in the space changes throughout the day/ evening and city life becomes a backdrop to the work. No. 1 Poultry is a very significant site in the history of London; the main East-West road in Roman London crossed the Walbrook metres away. The Walbrook is the silent river in the exhibition title, one of London’s lost rivers it has inspired much of the work in the exhibition. Photographs show the space in different lights and work by artists from @ground__collective . More information on the collective’s Instagram page.
Come along on ‘Sensing a Lost River’ - an inspirational walk with artist and mudlarker Mark Sowden this Saturday from 1:30-3:00pm! This will be a guided walk from Liverpool Street to the Thames during which we will seek out the subtle clues in today’s urban landscape that allow us to follow the course of the Walbrook, the lost river that once ran through the centre of Roman London. Mark will refer to maps of Roman and Medieval London and bring finds from the Thames foreshore to help you understand how this landscape changed during the past 2,000 years ago. The walk will take us past 1 Poultry metres away from the location of a bridge that took Roman London’s main east west Road across the Walbrook.
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Please sign up on @hyphastudios Eventbrite page (link in our bio). The walk costs £10 which supports Ground Collective’s exhibition ‘Messages from a Silent River.
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#walbrookriver #historiclondon #cityoflondonwalkingtour #tracingalostriver
Yesterday I posted photographs of a Medieval encaustic tile I found on the Thames foreshore. Today I want to show you a gouache painting I made of the tile and how I repeated and rotated that design twelve times to create a pattern of stunning complexity. Enough of the tile remained to imagine the whole but I still had to invent some detail in the corner opposite the head. The tile has a line of symmetry on a diagonal from one corner to another. Whenever I see this feature I know the tile can be used to generate more complex patterns by placing four tiles together, rotating them 90 degrees to each other. I duplicated the tiles using photoshop, placed twelve together on the computer screen and began rotating them. The corner details at either end of the diagonal line of symmetry are different and the aim is to rotate the tiles in such a way that the same corner detail on four tiles meets at one point. Once this is achieved , the full potential of the tile is unlocked. Swipe to see the result. The overall design pulses with energy, suggesting rose petals, crosses and fleur de lis. I’m sure the tile was designed to be laid this way. The logic and control of geometry combined with strangeness of the imagery(the subject of my last post) come together to produce a quintessential Late-Medieval object.
This recent find from the Thames foreshore is an encaustic floor tile. The surface design has been made by pressing a wooden stamp into the red clay and filling the impression with white clay. Encaustic floor tiles were made in England from the 13th to the 16th century. Normally the lead glaze on these tiles gives brown and yellow colour scheme. However, it seems that this tile was over-fired or the glaze was contaminated because the colours are much darker than usual. I am certain my tile is late Medieval but cannot find a match on the London Museum and British Museum databases. Until I do, I cannot be sure where and when the tile was made. The imagery on the tile is intriguing. It appears to show foliage coming from the mouth of a man or an animal. This can be interpreted as a type of Green Man foliate head called a ‘disgorging head’. Foliate heads were a popular motif in Gothic architectural carving from the 13th to the 15th centuries. Swipe to see examples from Kilpeck church and Southwell minster. The disgorging foliate head is a very rare motif for tiles. The one example on the British Museum database is shown as a black and white illustration. How was this motif incorporated into Christian iconography? One explanation is that it referred to the Old Testament story of Seth planting a seed in his father, Adam’s mouth after Adam died. A great tree grew from the seed and wood from the tree was used to make the true cross. Gradually, over time, the motif lost its meaning and became more decorative. Later examples, dating to the 16th century are just as likely to show foliage coming from the mouths of animals. So, is that a human head or an animal head in the corner? The answer should help date the tile.
