Russian Cloth Seals in Britain: A Guide to Identification, Usage and Anglo-Russian Trade in the 18th and 19th Centuries

By John Sullivan

For many decades in the 18th and 19th centuries, Russia was the world's greatest exporter of flax and hemp and Great Britain its major customer. Most studies of flax and hemp and their associated industries have hitherto concentrated on the economic and historical events surrounding the rise and fall of these industries in Britain. This book is based on a large body of new material consisting of lead-alloy seals that were attached to bundles of flax and hemp exported from Russia and aims chiefly to describe the different seals that were used and to explain the reasons why they were employed. It offers a short history of their use, a guide to their identification and a catalogue of items recovered in Britain, opening up a valuable new source of material for analysing a different aspect of the history of commercial relations between Russia and Britain and providing assistance for finders and museum curators in identifying and deciphering these objects correctly. The text guides the reader through the different types of seal so far recorded using illustrations, transliterations of the Cyrillic texts found on the seals and explanatory tables, as well as a comprehensive catalogue. Analysis is conducted of the information found in the seals. This information provides us with a picture of the manner in which the export of these products from Russia to Britain was handled and allows us to make comparisons over different periods of time and to analyse the different systems of quality control used. It also enables us to record the geographical distribution of Russian ports used for the export of flax and hemp to the UK, where the spread of their distribution tells us something of the redistribution of these imports and provides an understanding of the use to which their by-products were put as part of the agricultural practices of the 18th and 19th centuries.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Release date: Jun 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781842179185

John Sullivan

The author began studying Russian in 1950 and after completing a degree in Russian Studies at the University of Manchester went on to eventually become Chairman of the Russian Department at the University of St Andrews. His research interests lie in the development of Russian language and, since the mid-1990s, Russian lead-alloy cloth seals.

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Published by

Oxbow Books, Oxford, UK

© J. Sullivan, 2012

ISBN 978 1 84217 465 4

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sullivan, J. (John), 1937-

Russian cloth seals in Britain : trade, textiles and origins / John Sullivan.

    pages ; cm

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-1-84217-465-4

  1. Cloth seals (Numismatics)--Russia--History. 2. Cloth seals (Numismatics)--Russia--Catalogs. 3. Flax industry-

-Russia--History. 4. Hemp industry--Russia--History. 5. Russia--Commerce--Great Britain--History--18th century.

6. Great Britain--Commerce--Russia--History--18th century. 7. Russia--Commerce--Great Britain--History--19th

century. 8. Great Britain--Commerce--Russia--History--19th century. I. Title.

  CD6026.S85 2012

  737’.60947--dc23

2012011052

Front cover: The Jessie of Perth at Riga, Charles Slae, 1838.

Courtesy of Perth Museum and Art Gallery, Perth and Kinross Council © 2011

Back cover: Nikolaevskiy bridge at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries

and a view of the English Embarkment (from a postcard of the time) © author.

Printed in Great Britain by

Short Run Press, Exeter

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Abbreviations, definitions and conventions

The Russian alphabet in the 18th and 19th centuries

PROLEGOMENA

1.     Russian trade with Britain

1.1     Russian maritime trade in the 18th century

1.2     Russian flax and hemp trade with England

1.3     Russian flax and hemp trade with Scotland

2.     Russian ports

2.1     St Petersburg

2.2     Riga

2.3     Archangel

3.     Background to the use of lead-alloy seals

3.1     Quality control (brack, bracque) in the Russian Empire

4.     Grades of flax and hemp

4.1     Terms used in grading

4.2     Archangel flax

4.3     St Petersburg flax

4.4     St Petersburg hemp

4.5     Riga flax grades

4.6     Grades in other Baltic ports

4.7     Russian hemp

4.8     Summary of flax and hemp sorts

4.9     Maps

4.9.1     Russia 1740–1905

4.9.2     Northern and Central Russia

4.9.3     St Petersburg and the Baltic

4.9.4     Southern Russia

Photo Gallery

PART ONE: LEAD SEALS OF RUSSIAN ORIGIN

5.     Russian seals and their characteristics

5.1     Flax and hemp bundle seals

5.1.1     Summary of flax and hemp seal types

5.2     Characteristics of Russian seals

5.2.1     Russian seals, 1740s–1760

5.2.2     Unprovenanced Russian seals, 1740s–1760

5.2.3     Russian seals, 1760s–1840s

5.2.4     Obverse of Russian seals, 1760s–1840s

5.2.5     Reverse of Russian seals, 1760s–1840s

5.2.6     St Petersburg seals, 1830–early 1840s

5.2.7     Seals with two surnames

5.2.8     St Petersburg seals, 1840s–1850s

5.2.9     Archangel seals

5.2.10   Archangel seals, pre-1820s

5.2.11   Archangel seals, 1820s–1839

5.2.12   Obverse of Archangel seals, 1820s–1839

5.2.13   Reverse of Archangel seals, 1820s–1839

5.2.14   Archangel seals, 1838–1902

5.2.15   Seals from adjacent provinces

5.2.16   Russian words and abbreviations in Cyrillic on Archangel seals

5.2.17   Quality control officers (desyatniki)

5.2.18   Date of Russian flax and hemp seals

5.2.19   Initials of producers/owners/agents

5.2.20   Letters and digits on the reverse of Russian lead seals

5.2.21   Initials on the obverse/reverse of St Petersburg seals

5.2.22   Post numbers on Russian seals

5.3     Railway seals

5.4     Fur-trade seals

5.5     Miscellaneous Russian seals

5.5.1     Seals with Russian State arms

5.5.2     Seals with Russian city arms

5.5.3     Seals bearing State arms

5.5.4     Seals with St Petersburg city arms

5.5.5     Seal with arms of Siberia

5.6     Russian trade seals

5.6.1     Possible unidentified flax seals

5.6.2     Seals with links to other commercial activities

5.6.3     Individual and company names

5.6.4     Seals from the Soviet period

5.7     Seals from the Russian Empire

5.7.1     Riga flax seals

5.8     Other possible Baltic/Riga seals

5.9     Concluding remarks

5.10     Illustrations (Figures 1–93)

PART TWO: CATALOGUE OF LEAD SEALS

6.1     Cyrillic letters on Russian seals

6.1.1     Transliteration of Russian seals

6.1.2     Conventions used in transcription

6.2     Seals in Scottish museums

6.3     Seals in English museums

6.4     Seals in Private Collections

6.4.1     Private owners/collectors: abbreviations

6.5     Seals from incomplete or inaccurately reported source

PART THREE: APPENDICES

7.1     Archangel Quality Control Officers (Initials APX, A. П.)

7.2     St Petersburg Quality Control Officers (Initials S P B / С П Б / S P)

7.3     Other Quality Control Officers (Initials N. P., W. K., W. U.)

7.3.1     Other Quality Control Officers (Provenance indeterminable)

7.4     Dates of Russian flax and hemp seals

7.5     Initials of producers/exporters/agents

7.5.1     Initials of producers/exporters/agents on Archangel seals

7.5.2     Initials of producers/exporters/agents on St Petersburg seals

7.6     Initials and digits on Russian seals

7.6.1     Initials and digits on St Petersurg seals

7.6.2     Initials and digits on seals of uncertain provenance (N. P., W. K., W. U., П Д., И П)

7.6.3     Initials and digits on seals of undetermined origin

7.7     Initials on first line of St Petersburg and unprovenanced seals

7.7.1     Initials on obverse (other than Л. Д.)

7.7.2     Initials on reverse (other than N. P.)

7.8     Post numbers in final line of the obverse of seals

Index of Illustrations

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

This monograph owes a great deal to many people, archivists, librarians and curators who have encouraged and in their different ways helped me put together this guide and catalogue, in particular to Michael King of the Museum of County Down and former Curator of North-East Fife Museum Services which oversees St Andrews Museum, to the late Geoff Egan of the Museum of London who followed and encouraged the research and assisted with invaluable comments and to Dr Barbara Crawford of the University of St Andrews who read earlier versions and offered many valuable comments and suggestions.

Others have made facilities available for examining seals in their charge, sometimes enduring with kindness, patience and helpfulness repeat visits to their collections, especially David Alston of the Courthouse Museum, Cromarty, Steven Ashley of Norfolk Landscape Archaeology, Rachel Benvie of Montrose Museum, Angela Bolton, Senior Finds Liaison Officer for Warwickshire and Worcestershire, Dr Helen Geake, Finds Adviser in the Department of Archaeology at Cambridge University and formerly Finds Liaison Officer in the Museum Services, Suffolk and Ann Jones of Waverley Museum Services (Farnham). Special thanks are also due to a number of specialists in St Petersburg, at the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of History, at the Russian National Library and in particular to Lyudmila Sesyolkina of the Russian State Historical Archive.

I wish also to acknowledge grants made to me to support the work I have carried out in the UK and in Russia by The British Academy, The Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, The Russell Trust Development Awards through the University of St Andrews and The Strathmartine Trust, Edinburgh.

My work has also been helped greatly by all those metaldetector users who have been in touch with me and either lent me their collections for study or have sent me photographs or scans. Without their assistance the results of this study would be greatly impoverished and I am deeply grateful to them. They are far too numerous to mention individually but in particular I must single out Jim Halliday of Norton in Yorkshire, who acted as a channel for many finds recovered by metal detector users in the north of England, to David Powell who sent illustrations of many unusual seals and to Chris Lasseter of Fife who allowed me to examine his substantial collection of finds from Fife.

Finally, to a group of individuals without whose help the book could not have been prepared: Dr Martin Sullivan, Alison Aiton and Dr John Ball who rendered invaluable advice and assistance with digital photography and computer technology. To Dr Michael Beetham who prepared the maps and spent many hours resolving computer problems which others over the years have been unable to solve I express my deepest gratitude. I am also greatly indebted to the editorial and production staff at Oxbow Books without whose help and perseverance the book would not have appeared.

Introduction

For many decades in the 18th and 19th centuries Russia was the world’s greatest exporter of flax and hemp, and Great Britain its major customer. Most studies of flax and hemp and their associated industries have hitherto concentrated on the economic and historical events surrounding the rise and fall of these industries in Britain. The present study is based on a large body of new material consisting of Russian lead-alloy seals which were attached to bundles of flax and hemp exported from Russia, and aims chiefly to describe the different seals that were used and to explain the reasons why the lead-alloy seals were employed. Whilst specific information on the location of some finds is available, in most instances the lack of contextual evidence makes it impossible to offer more than a tentative description of the historical and commercial framework in which the individual seals occurred. Nevertheless, the study of Russian lead seals in the UK is of value in itself since it has opened up a valuable new source of material for analysing a different aspect of the history of commercial relations between Russia and Britain.

The seals had to conform to certain different criteria, having on the one hand to correspond to the technical standards of the day and on the other being required to differ in text, since it was their very function to distinguish goods, their quality and the place from where they were transported across national boundaries. The information contained on them therefore provides us with a picture of the manner in which the export of these products from Russia to Britain was handled. They allow us to make comparisons over different periods of time and to analyse the different systems of quality control used. They also enable us to record in part the geographical distribution of the Russian ports used for the export of flax and hemp to the UK. The spread of their distribution in Britain tells us something of the redistribution of flax and hemp imports once they reached Britain and provides an understanding, more detailed than hitherto, of the use their by-products were put to as part of the agricultural practices of the 18th and 19th centuries in some areas of the country.

This monograph which has grown out of the difficulties encountered over the last two decades in recognising and interpreting Russian lead-alloy seals offers a short history of their use, a guide to their identification and a catalogue of items recovered in Britain. It is not the work of a numismatist or specialist in sphragistics but of a Russian linguistic historian and palaeographer who has sought to decipher and explain the significance of the seals and some of the imprints on them.

Collections of flax and hemp lead-alloy bundle seals of Russian origin are found in museums throughout the UK, reflecting discoveries particularly in parts of east Scotland (Fife, Aberdeenshire, Inverness-shire (Cromarty and Dornoch), Arbroath, Montrose, Falkirk, Edinburgh and Dundee), some regions of Yorkshire (York, Knaresborough and Hull), Lancashire (Lancaster, Liverpool and Preston) and north Cheshire, parts of the Midlands (Warwick, Hereford and Nottinghamshire (Newark)) and a belt of country stretching from south-west England (Bristol, Gloucester, Lyme Regis, Exeter, Padstow and Taunton) through Salisbury, Newbury, Wallingford and Abingdon to London. Finds of flax and hemp seals have been recorded in Suffolk, Norfolk, Essex and Surrey and individual recoveries have been made in Ulster and South Wales.

Some museums house large numbers, others have individual examples. Many are retained in private collections, usually of metal detector users but sometimes of private landowners. Whilst clearly less attractive than collections of more valuable coins and earlier seals, they nevertheless form an important part of the commercial history of Russia and the UK and carry on them illuminating data. There is a great risk that such discoveries will be cast aside as the important contribution they can make to the economic and social history of Britain and Russia is totally unappreciated.

It is important to point out that many seals of Baltic origin are erroneously listed in museum collections as Russian, and some Russian seals are incorrectly described as flax/hemp bundle seals when they are more likely to have been attached to consignments of other products. The aim of this guide and catalogue is to provide assistance for finders and museum curators in identifying such objects correctly.

The monograph consists of an introductory section that discusses aspects of Russian and Russo-British commercial history important for a full understanding of the use of leadalloy seals.

Discussion of the seals themselves is presented in three parts. Part One is the most important for scholars and general users wishing to interpret individual examples of seals which have been recovered in Great Britain. With the help of illustrations it guides the reader through the different types of seal so far recorded. The greatest difficulty has been the problem of presenting and describing the material for a readership lacking familiarity with the Cyrillic alphabet, and this has been addressed in large part by transliteration given in parentheses after the Cyrillic form and by the provision of explanatory tables. Analysis is also conducted of the information found on all or most seals. Seals found in ports of the Russian Empire, such as Riga, are also briefly discussed.

A number of other types of Russian seal are also noted, but because of the paucity of clear information on them it is difficult to ascertain with which trades they were connected. The establishment of which trades are involved requires the identification of particular entrepreneurs and their business establishments, some of which appear only as initials.

The catalogue which forms Part Two of the Guide lists seals from all sources that were made available to the author for record and description by the beginning of 2007. The vast majority has been examined de visu and only a handful have been described solely on the basis of drawings or photographs. Seals posted on the website of the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS), have been omitted, with the exception of Suffolk, where all the seals had already been examined before being posted on PAS. Some other individual examples, which were similarly examined before the establishment of the PAS website, are included in Section 6.4 in the lists of museum holdings or of private collections.

The letters on the seals are transcribed exactly as they appear with Cyrillic and Roman letters (Section 6.1; Section 6.1.2; Section 6.2 (Scottish museums); Section 6.3 (English museums); Section 6.4 (Private collections); 6.5 (Anonymous)) and are transliterated into Roman letters following the conventions described in Section 6.1, Section 6.1.1, Section 6.1.2.

Part Three of the work consists of a number of appendices listing the different items of information relating to personnel, dates, locations, fibre grades and post numbers.

Abbreviations, definitions and conventions

Abbreviations

Definitions and conventions