In this week’s Artifact Alley, we will be discussing a decorative piece of metal found by Gary Drayton in season 6, episode 5. This item has been referred to as a "French military cap-badge”, it’s a long strip of metal with a straight bottom and has arches along the top part with a motif in each arch.
From The Curse of Oak Island - History Channel
In the episode Gary discovers the object while metal detecting with Jack Begley on lot 21. The team identifies the motifs on the item as being Fleur-de-Lys (flower of lily) which they associate with France, the Fleur-de-Lys was indeed used as an emblem for the French royals. But the Fleur-de-Lys is not only associated with France; many families in different countries (England, France, Spain etc...) have used the Fleur-de-Lys on their coats of arms. It is actually one of the four most used symbols in heraldry.
On inspection, we feel that the motif isn’t a perfect match with the Fleur-de-Lys. The Fleur-de-Lys has parallel branches that drop downward, the motif on the lot-21 find has parallel branches that go upwards rather than down. For comparison in the next image you can see the item found on the island and three different fleur-de-Lys designs.
The team suggested that the item could be a cap-badge from an 18th-century French Grenadiers cap. Which leads them to theorize about the duke d’Anville’s possible involvement on the island. We have searched through many records of images of French Grenadiers caps, from the 17th-century to the 19th-cebtury but unfortunately none of them have any cap-badges that resemble this item. We went further; we checked belts, bags, weapons and full military uniforms and again we couldn’t find a match or anything vaguely similar.
Our search took us to look at other items that have ornate sheet-metal decoration or trim. We failed to see anything of similar design, but we think that this piece could possibly have been part of an ornate book cover or a fragment of metal trim from a box, or piece of furniture.
Ornate Trim Box (Presents UK)
We reached out to a French metal detection expert who could not identify the item. We also made contact with a military uniform specialist who suggested it might be part of a belt, though we have yet to find a similar design.
If you have any ideas about what this particular object could be, please contact us.
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