Saturday 12 December 2015

Reprise-ish cum déja-vu-ish post?

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16 comments:

  1. (1) This appears to be a Martinware stoneware grotesque owl. It is a jug - the head acts as a lid. It is English, circa mid 19th Century.

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    1. Totally correct Mike in all but purpose ~ A jug with neither lip nor handle? Could it be a tobacco pot?

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  2. (5) This a form of hand cranked fan, English, again mid nineteenth century, probably of sheet brass (painted).

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    1. Correct in all points, a more efficient means of getting a fire ablaze than the bellows.

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  3. (10). Coconut cup, with gilt brass mounts. Dating from the mid 1500s, and probably German. Just might, I suppose, be English, but looks a bit stolid and over confident, so will guess German.

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    1. Initially I was in complete agreement, but now I'm wondering if the handle and strap motifs don't give it a more Italianate appearance?

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  4. (11) Another coconut cup. Fantastic bird with head as lid. Looks a little later than 10; say early to mid 17th century. Probably French.

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    1. Yes, possibly a tad earlier, made for a Landgraf who fancied falconry? (Teutonic rather than French to my eye.)

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  5. 12) Bronze Roman key, 3rd/4th century A.D.

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    1. I'd reckoned this to be a Viking key dating between the 3rd & 9th century ~ but I wouldn't risk money on it.

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  6. (4) Probably a Scottish Regimental table snuff box. Victorian/Edwardian.

    (1) Sorry, forgot to state the obvious. It is, of course, a tobacco jar.

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    1. 4. Yes the spoon on the chain rather gives it away, I'd not seen a snuff-mull made from a whole rams head before. Typical Scottish design with the cut and polished cairngorm adornments.

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  7. (6) Nice piece of 18th/19th century visual/verbal humour. When someone was offered a glass of wine, the polite answer might well have been "just a mouthful", and the polite one would have been offered 'just a toothful' accompanied by this silver wine cup, which was probably larger than it appears, so that 'just a toothful' would have been a very generous off. Old English crude humour!

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    1. You have it Mike. This was catalogued as a stirrup-cup, it may have been used as such.

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  8. 2. A silver plate Meat-carving trolley with a duck-press and space for charcoal warmers or tea-lights below the carving-deck.
    3. A rustic painted candle-box
    7. Silver tetradrachm of king Heraios who ruled Kushan from AD 1 to AD 30 (The bottom word on the reverse says Kossanu which is now known as Kushan).
    8. One of the many off-beat (if you'll excuse the pun) wrist watch designs by Oulm, who specialised in the whacky and unusual.
    9. an Antonov AN 225 at the time it was considered the world's largest plane. The Russians designed generously and confidently since the 1930s in aircraft and later in aero-space equipment.

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  9. 9. During the cold war there was a great deal of disrespectful anti-soviet propaganda. I recall being told by a traveler that he had seen 'clueless' Russian engineers attempting to start a Russian aircraft by hitting the engine with hammers. Whilst true this was misleading, many British piston-engine aircraft were also started this way. The hammer was used to strike an explosive cartridge which would spin the engine fast enough to ignite all the other cylinders and allow the engineer to replace the spent cartridge with a spark-plug.

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