Firebacks

Description: Rectangular; no edging; top centre, Tudor rose with a crown above; in each top corner, mask of a crowned bearded man; right of rose and crown, figure of a horse with vestige of a base, angled bend sinister; left of rose and crown, crouched figure of a four-legged creature with the legs and hind quarters of a deer (or horse), scaly/feathered belly and shoulders, an apparent wing and a human or simian head facing upwards at the end of an extended neck.

Notes: A striking fireback with bold decorative elements in relief. The rose and crown are similar to those which adorn late Henrician iron artillery, which may suggest that the ironworks where this fireback was cast was also where cannon were made. The crowned bearded faces might be caricatures of King Henry VIII. The figure of the horse with its vestigial base was probably a sculptured model with an attached base for displaying on a flat surface. The quadruped cannot be identified with a specific mythological creature but is a hybrid chimera-like form born of a tradition of Mannerist grotesquerie, probably derived from a carved wooden component of an elaborate interior display. As has been seen with other decorative stamps formed from the impression of high-relief, three-dimensional carvings, not all of the features present will have been rendered completely in the relatively shallow depth of the mould for the fireback, making identification uncertain.