This ceramic mould would have produced a small circular glass stud, 13mm in diameter, with a pattern of interlocking loops. It is most likely to have been used to make a disc to be set in metal, as seen in mounts for book covers, reliquaries or wooden crosses.

A search for parallels to the Bermondsey ceramic mould has identified other ecclesiastical objects, which form the major context for eighth-century interlaced decoration. It is most likely that the stud(s) produced in the mould were intended to be part of a decorative object, such as a mount for a book cover, reliquary or wooden cross. While all of the known parallels are flat and larger in size than casts from the Bermondsey mould would have been, they illustrate the rich use of this characteristic style in church objects. Three cast openwork mounts of copper-alloy from Whitby Abbey, two cast from the same mould, are thought to be from a book cover or shrine, such as the embossed silver mount featuring an equal-armed cross from a portable altar, enshrined as a relic, from St Cuthbert’s tomb in Durham Cathedral. While these mounts were fixed with domed studs to the objects they decorated, the studs were most likely plain and not decorated with interlace. Decorated mounts of a much smaller scale can be seen on the Monymusk reliquary, now in the National Museum of Scotland. This house-shaped retainer is decorated with several circular and rectangular mounts with fine interlace patterns of the same characteristic style, some set in frames with red enamel.