#mudlarking

This decorative belt-mount was discovered along the banks of the river Thames. It's crafted from copper, and it depicts a dragon-like creature known as a wyvern.

As this article explains:

Smaller than a five-pence coin, the smallest "dragon" resides in the London Museum collection. An object of fascination, almost nothing is known about it, aside from the fact that it was made and used in medieval London. It’s so small that the easiest way to hold it is with tweezers.

Intended to be used as a belt mount, it would have been attached to a belt by a rivet as an aesthetic embellishment.

The mount depicts a roaring wyvern, a legendary winged creature with open jaws, two legs and a curled tail. Wyverns were regarded as powerful and fearsome monsters, and many are found in medieval coats of arms. They represented pestilence and destruction, appearing in illuminated manuscripts.

Sources & More Info:

The London Museum: London's Tiniest Dragon and Medieval Fashion Laws

It's been a while since I posted any new creek finds! There have been a LOT of neat ones lately so instead of my usual small "plate of forbidden snacks" photo layout I just arranged a few of them on a tabletop.

Pictured are: deer skull, deer jawbone, cow teeth, horse tooth, muskrat tooth, deer toe bone, old toy car, a really neat toy boat from the 1970s/80s, an old melted milk glass marble, weird little iron concretion, a cute little yellow tile, nice chonky pieces of bonfire glass, a rainbow of pretty tumbled bits of old pottery, china, and glass, a cow ear tag, and oodles of crinoids, brachiopods, bryozoans, and other neat fossils.

Also found: someone's checkbook (empty), old cellphone (found a couple of those down there lately), Great White "Once Bitten" cassette tape, and Melissa Forney's "Pizzazz: Songs for the Writing Classroom" CD lol.

And there are FOUR special secret finds: