Badge

This humble but hugely powerful object is a Charleston free badge, an oval copper planchet worn by a freed African slave in South Carolina in the 1780s.

A £500 reward is being offered for information that leads to the recovery of this badge belonging to the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers.

Badges by Philip Atwood, published by the British Museum Press. ISBN 0714150142 £7.99sb AMONG the British Museum’s priceless antiquities is the museum’s collection of some 12,000 badges. A small, hard-to-find exhibition, showing at the museum until January 16, presents just a tiny fraction of this archive.

UK: LURKING in the depths of a maritime sale at Henry Aldridge & Son (10 per cent buyer’s premium) in Devizes, Wiltshire, on July 21, was this badge, the most expensive Edwardian badge ever sold at auction.