Attempts to strengthen integral seal tags II

Following on from part I, some Swedish examples. Why Swedish? Because the Swedish Archives have a lovely collection online, a snapshot of documents from 1374-1375.

Swedish slit tags

A number of Swedish integral seal tags show a characteristic which I think is another way to attempt to relieve stresses on integral seals tags. One of the weakest points on the seal tag is where the slit ends. This point is pulled and pushed around by the weight of the seal and by people pushing the seal to dangle below the document. The Swedish documents instead of a simple horizontal slit, start with a small diagonal cut before cutting the horizontal cut. I believe this is likely to relieve the stress of the end of the cut a bit.

Here's a few examples:

Document
Sweden, 1374-5
(Swedish National Archives DS8653)
The tag is folded up a little, but the 2nd image of the back shows the slit clearly.

Document
Sweden, 1374-5
(Swedish National Archives DS8658)
You can see how the slit opens up a little to distribute the stress of the tag pulling away.

Document
Sweden, 1374-5
(Swedish National Archives DS8712)
The seal has fallen off this document, but tag is intact - so the tag was stronger than the wax.

These still did break, even if they might have been a bit stronger:

Document
Sweden, 1374-5
(Swedish National Archives DS8866)
A tear is starting continuing the diagonal slit into the parchment. A second tear is seen a little further down the tag.

Document
Sweden, 1374-5
(Swedish National Archives DS8783)
The point jsut a little further down the tag seems to be the main stress point for this style of tag.

Document
Sweden, 1374-5
(Swedish National Archives DS8793)
The slit hasn't torn, but a tear is beginning to develop just below the slit.



This style of slit is very very common on integral tags in the Swedish archives collection of 1374/5, but was not universal - some integral tags with straight slits without a diagonal end still existed:

Document
Sweden, 1374-5
(Swedish National Archives DS8848)



Document
Sweden, 1374-5
(Swedish National Archives DS8822)

But some caution needs to be applied to identification, for example this document at first appears to not have the diagonal slit, but looking more closely, there are some fibres applied across the faint remains of a diagonal slit end, which I believe is a modern era restoration (although it could be earlier), perhaps a Victorian era conservator misidentifying the slit as a tear.

Document
Sweden, 1374-5
(Swedish National Archives DS8832)


Swedish double tags
The following example slits the tag into two tags before twisting the two tags together and sealing the document.

Document
Sweden, 1374-5
(Swedish National Archives DS8722)



It is difficult to tell if this is a deliberate attempt at strengthening or not, as I have only one example so far. It could also be a botched attempt to create a twist under the tag, or an example where the tag was split intended to hold two seals, then at the last moment only one was to be used so the seals were recombined. Or it might be a botched attempt at the Y shaped tails method of seal stress distribution.

These are all techniques I'll elaborate upon later. However, while the tags are narrower, now two tags have to tear before the seal becomes detached, so this might be a intentional method of strengthening a tag.

Many other examples with split tags have lost their wax making it hard to tell which of the above explanations might be correct - if many examples occurred, an explanation of a botched example of another method would seem very unlikely.

Document
Sweden, 1374-5
(Swedish National Archives DS8712)


Swedish slit and fold integral tags
This is an ingenious hybrid of integral and separate parchment seals tags. A tag is created as for an integral tag, but the tag is then passed through a slit in the body of the parchment, just as separate tags are. Passing the end through the loop made by the tag, adds a second reinforcement. In this case the body of the parchment is not doubled over for strength as in a separate parchment tag though, through necessity of the design.

Document
Sweden, 1374-5
(Swedish National Archives DS8865)


Document
Sweden, 1374-5
(Swedish National Archives DS8874)
Two pieces of tag pass through the slit here - perhaps two tags with one partially broken away? or a double tag as discussed above?

This is not a common method in the Swedish archives, as evidenced by the few examples (there are a couple more, but photographed confusingly), but I think it quite ingenious.

Conclusions
The above is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but rather a number of techniques that have stood out to me lately. I'm also not commenting on things done to the wax or the tag under the wax - those will be for later posts. I'm sure I'll find more things in this category later too - perhaps I'll even manage a second post eventually.

Not mentioned above is probably the most significant improvement to the integral seal tag was the development of the separate seal tag. Which leads nicely into my next post....