Posted: 16/06/17 (11:59am)I picked up a very nice Turkish WW1 cavalry sabre recently and have just added it to the website. It is only the second time I have managed to find one of these rare sword. The blade of this sabre is very sharp still and shows evidence of having been used in combat. It is easy to imagine this sword being brought back to the UK as a trophy of war from the Suez or Gallipoli.
I am also still working to find out more about the 1803 pattern British Infantry officer's sabre that I bought a while ago. Unfortunately I am still no further forward in finding out who Thomas Lowe was. There are so many individuals of that name that I fear I will not be able to identify the man associated with this sword. I have tried searching for an officer in the British army of the time, have searched for someone associated with the Levant Company and the British East India Company (just in case he wasn't a British army officer but was an officer in one of the private armies of the trading companies), and have also tried to find out if Thomas Lowe was the sword cutler/smith who made or retailed the sword. All to no avail.
The sword is beautiful. It was a very expensive weapon in its day with all the additions/adornments associated with the owner being a wealthy and senior officer. The hilt is ivory and the cyphered guard and lions head pommel are very well and intricately made - some of the cheaper 1803 pattern lions heads look more like dogs and most swords of this pattern have shagreen (ray skin) grips. Ivory was expensive and usually a indicator of seniority amongst officers.
The blade was originally indigo blue with gilt inlay to the engraving. One side shows the name "Tho Lowe" within decorative borders, below trophies of war. Above this are rosettes and ribbons and the Royal Arms bearing the mottoes "Dieu et Mon Droit" and "Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense." Above the Royal Arms are engraved the "Flowers of the Union" - rose, thistle and shamrock.
The obverse of the blade is engraved with decorative borders including flowers above which is an engraving of an infantry officer of the time flourishing an 1803 pattern sabre. Above this is the cypher of King George III below a Georgian crown.
The engraving is of high quality with tiny traces of the original gilt remaining.
I would love to hear from anyone who could shed some light on this great sword.
Maybe the engraving of the officer could help identify the regiment?
Does anyone else have a sword bearing the name Thomas Lowe? If so, drop me a line.
Posted: 07/06/17 (13:06pm)A while back I wrote a very brief blog about a Finnish M27 bayonet which then turned out to be an M28 bayonet. A helpful reader of that blog has since contacted me to give me more information on these and other early Finnish bayonets. I thought that instead of adding a few details to the already written blog, I would write a new one and include all the information that Kurt Hulse shared with me.
The Finnish M27 was made exclusively by Fiskars. The highest observed serial number for an original M27 is 33,628. The serial numbering started at 20,000 but just because a serial is between 20,000-33,628 it does not necessarily mean the bayonet is still in M27 configuration as soon after going into production the M27 was modified and re-designated as the M29. An original M27 is very rare.
The only way to tell if an M27 is still in its original configuration is either by x-ray or by removing the hilt scales. The M27 was modified by adding a steel plate to the inside of the hilt and you can see the welds of the plate on x-ray. The added plate and welding on the M29 can be seen on the photograph below.
Photograph courtesy of Kurt Hulse.
Both Fiskars and Hackman made the M29 bayonet. They are very similar to each other but the Hackman M29 has an additional internal weld near the pommel that Fiskars does not. The other difference is the Hackman blade at the cross guard is angular and wider whereas Fiskars is not as wide and curves slightly outwards at the cross guard. This can be seen in the photograph above.
The M28 was a Civil Guard Bayonet and is similar to the M29 but there are differences. The biggest is that the M28 was dipped in blueing from the pommel to the ricasso. As a result of this one can often see a brown stripe on the M28 blade. M28 bayonets also have a Civil Guard inspector mark on the cross guard.
All Finnish Sword or Austrian Style Bayonets blades are in the white except for the M35 Army bayonet made by both Fiskars and Hackman. The entire M35 bayonet was blued.
M27, M28, M29, and early M28-30 do not have oil holes.
Later M28-30, M28-30-35, and M35 have an oil hole.
The M28-30 was made by Hackman. M28-30-35 bayonets were made by Hackman and Fiskars. All M28-30 and M28-30-35 have "Sk.Y" marked on the ricasso designating them as Civil Guard bayonets. They are all hilted with beautiful burl wood grip scales. The difference between the M28-30 and M28-30-35 is in the refined spear point and more defined edge of the M28-30-35 blade.
So there you have it, a description of the difference between the similar in appearance early Finnish bayonets. I hope you find it interesting and helpful.
Posted: 01/06/17 (10:04am)The French/Chilean cavalry sabre is now on the website. It is a beautiful looking sword and will be a great display item in any collection. I have put it on sale for the bargain price of only £195. A real "come and get me" price.
It has been another busy week and it is going to get even busier. I'm driving down to Cambridge today and then on to London on Friday afternoon. Ill be driving back from London on Sunday.
With luck I will be coming home with some great items. I'll let you know...
Posted: 26/05/17 (15:41pm)Another week has flown by! As always, I haven't managed to finish my weekly "to do" list but I have managed to photograph some of my back log of items for the web site. I will be adding a new stock item each day next week - or at least I've added the adding of new stock to my "to do" list for next week 😉
I mentioned in my last blog that I would write about my P1803 Infantry Officer's Sabre and I still intend to do so. At the moment I've drawn a blank in trying to identify the individual named on the blade. The blade is richly engraved with trophies of war, the GR cypher, floral work, two shields/crests, one with "Honi Soit Qui Mal y Pense" (shame on him who thinks evil of it) which is the motto of the Order of the Garter and the other with "Dieu et mon droit," (God and my right), the motto of the Royal Arms of Great Britain. There is also a detailed etching of an infantry man standing about 2 inches tall.
There is no maker's mark as far as I can tell but the name Thomas Love is engraved just above the ricasso and bordered with scrolls and flowers. I have made the assumption that this is the name of the officer who owned the sabre. The ivory hilted sword was clearly the property of a wealthy and probably senior officer during the Peninsular Wars. I am very keen to identify him and learn his story.
As promised, I have listed the two signal cannons and thought I'd add a photo of each to this blog.
Posted: 22/05/17 (10:18am)I had a mixed week last week. I missed out on some nice items at auction but i bought some too.
I bought a pair of 19th Century, French made cavalry sabres. The sabres were made by the Chatellerault armoury for the Chilean cavalry. They are very attractive swords with pierced, polished steel bowl guards. I'll be adding one to the website later this week.
I also bought a very interesting turn of the century cast iron signal cannon. The cannon was made in the late Victorian or early Edwardian period and is modelled on a field gun of that time. Again, I'll be adding it to the website in a day or so. I'm itching to get it and all my purchases photographed and added to the site but am rather busy at the moment. I'm busy blogging from an auction while I'm waiting for lots I'm interested in. My first one is coming up in the next 15-20 minutes.
A second cannon I bought is a bronze Georgian naval signal cannon. The barrel is typical of the period but the wooden truck is a replacement. That's not unusual and the truck is excellent, highly detailed and made from mahogany (I think). It's quite a substantial piece.
One can only imagine the working life of these signal cannons - both were clearly made for use and not as toys or display pieces. Was the Georgian cannon on a ship? Was it a noon gun? Did the field cannon serve a similar function on land? Maybe announcing dinner in the officer's mess? We'll never truly know what function they served but they are impressive collectables and wonderfully evocative.
My final purchase was an 1803 pattern British Infantry officer's sabre. It's beautiful. If only it could talk! Once it's photographed I'll give it a blog of its own with pics. It deserves it.
It's a tough choice as to which of my recent acquisitions is my favourite, I'm particularly taken with the cannons but I think it has to be the 1803 pattern Infantry officer's sabre.
Actually, on reflection I had an excellent week!☺
Posted: 05/05/17 (13:37pm)I'm back. We got back on the afternoon of the 3rd May feeling exhausted, dazed and confused. We had been traveling for almost 48 hours. We began with a 17 hour train journey from Varanasi to Delhi that was 7 hours delayed and left Varanasi at 2.37am, followed five hours after reaching Delhi by a flight to Schiphol which was followed by another from Schiphol to Edinburgh. With the time difference thrown in we felt like we were extras from the Walking Dead!
Two days later and we still feel far from rested. I guess it's going to take a couple of days to get back into the swing of things but I felt I should at least write my blog before carrying on with the "to do" mountain that seems to rise at an alarming rate whenever one goes away for any period.
I have been remiss in writing my blog and feel suitably guilty for it but I didn't really want to write about our holiday - it was after all, our holiday (and we had a fantastic time). I had expected to find plenty of wonderful and interesting items to buy and blog about but as it turned out, finding new stock was considerably harder than I had expected. I was a stranger in a strange land, totally without contacts or local knowledge. My attempts at recruiting local drivers and tour guides to assist in finding items was a waste of time as the vast majority of items I was shown were newly made "antiques" and the few genuine items were in such poor condition and with such high asking prices that I either wasn't interested or was unable to bring the price down low enough to make it worth while buying them. I even resorted to showing vendors my website so that they could see what price I was selling similar items for (and usually mine were in much better condition) in an attempt to reduce their asking price, only to be told on several occasions that I needed to put my prices up! Don't worry, I'm not going to do so.
Another hurdle which I was unaware of prior to going was that exporting antiques of any kind from India requires a license. It's not hard to obtain but is time consuming.
Ultimately I bought very few items. My star buy, the 19th century Zulu Iklwa (which I bought during a 72 hour stop over in Amsterdam) turned out to be my first and biggest purchase and even that had a sting in its tail. The spear itself is absolutely genuine and without doubt a Zulu war bring back but it appears that the tip has been re-pointed. The purists would say it has been fiddled with; others might say that the missing tip was restored/repaired but either way it wasn't quite as I had perceived it to be in my rush to buy it.
To be fair, whoever did the restoration did a very good job as I didn't pick up on it until it was pointed out to me on Wednesday afternoon (after photographing it and recording its dimensions I wrapped it carefully and posted it home so didn't really spend too much time examining it in minute detail). The Iklwa is a fantastic piece and still one of the best I have owned but I'm not quite sure how I feel about the work that was done on it.
Would I have preferred it to have had a missing tip? Part of me says yes - it's part of its history, its story and I enjoy the misty eyed imaginings of how and when that may have happened. But another part of me is very happy with how it looks re-tipped, knowing that it was carried during the Zulu wars... I guess it comes down to individual taste.
Should the dealer in Amsterdam have told me about the restoration? On that front I have no doubt. Of course he should. I would still have bought it - maybe not for quite so much (I would certainly have tried to use the information to bargain the price down) but he didn't tell me and I didn't spot it so we are where we are. I am at least telling you.
In a few days I will get the Iklwa listed with close up images of the tip and you will be able to make an informed choice.
When all is said and done it is a great example of a Zulu War fighting Iklwa, it's age and history are without question and it will make a fine addition to any collection.
Ok, so I have a mountain of mail still to deal with, unpacking to finish and all the other chores that welcome one home from holiday so I'd best get doing. We'll chat again soon...
