Item 1962/2 - One letter from Christopher Blunt to Ian Stewart with one letter from IS to CEB:

2 items, paper

One letter from Christopher Blunt to Ian Stewart with one letter from IS to CEB:
(a) letter from Christopher Blunt to Ian Stewart, manuscript, four pages on two folios (recto & verso), dated 7 April 1962, expressing appreciation to IS for writing "so fully with [his] views on Pendred" [i.e. a name represented on a small number of coins from the time of Offa (757-796). The consensus of opinion accepts that the piece with the name Pendred was a product of Offa's moneyer Paendraed but there are doubt about the purpose of the object. RHMD [i.e. Michael Dolley] believes that the piece was struck, which would favour an interpretation as coinage, but CEB says that he is keeping an open mind, because if cast the object would be less plausibly a coin. The letter continues at some length to discuss questions about the piece. In a postscript, CEB asks "who has the Copenhagen material", noting the Galster has just sent his historical introduction.
(b) letter from Ian Stewart to Christopher Blunt, manuscript, four pages on one folio folded into a booklet (recto & verso), dated 29 May [1962], which is datable to 1962 on basis of the reference to David Sellwood's presentation at the BNS May meeting (see below; see also the brief note about Sellwood's presentation in British Numismatic Journal, vol. 31 (1962), p. 170; cf. David Sellwood, 'Medieval minting techniques', British Numismatic Journal, vol. 31 (1962), pp. 57-65). In the letter, IS thanks CEB for his postcard from the Pyrenees and agrees that "Jim Stewart's work must be published" [presumably in reference to Prof. James R. B. Stewart (3 July 1913-6 February 1962), who was an Australian archaeologist of Cyprus and the Ancient Near East at the University of Sydney and member of the BNS]. IS refers to an enclosure consisting in an article from an "inaccessible publication", but there is no mention of an author or title. He enthusiastically recounts David Sellwood's presentation at the BNS May meeting in which Sellwood argued that the flans Anglo-Saxon coins were cut from a kind of pastry-cutter from a larger sheet after striking. He also says that Sellwood postulated square-headed dies, with which IS agrees, with a collar, with which he doesn't. IS further notes that RHMD [i.e. Michael Dolley] said that the BM is planning to test the Pendred. In the final paragraphs, IS says that he has been working on the inscriptions of Anglo-Saxon coins from Eadmund to Eadgar, which has led him to forming some ideas about the regional significance of moneyers' names.