File:Detail of finger-print (FindID 720877).jpg

English: A ceramic object showing a panther in relief. The item is oval in plan and pointed over in section. The front depicts a lion or panther walking to the left, with its right hindleg and foreleg extending forward. The beast has a rather elongated head and slender body. The tail extends above and forms a slender 'S-shaped' loop, with the tip of the tail pointing backwards. The background on which impression of the beast is situated is slightly convex, and leads to a narrow flat ledge that is visible around only parts of the perimeter. The reverse is convex but contains a deep oval depression. This is undoubtedly owing to a finger having been pressed into the wet clay; a finger-print is visible within the depression.

The ceramic is pale brown/cream in colour with grit and (probably) grog temper.

This object might be a clay luting similar to, though smaller than, that from Bush Lane, City of London (Henig, Art of Roman Britain). The present object might also have been a tool used by a metallurgist. Martin Henig comments that it was made by pressing a form, perhaps inteded for repoussee metalwork into clay, and it makes that it was employed like the London examples which produced crucibles and gold residues.