Books about antiques. - Review - book review

Magazine Antiques, Oct, 2000 by Alfred Mayor

So, this book is a series of tales traced back from the engraving or the form of the trophy to the reason it was made in the first place. There is, for example, the mess centerpiece of the old Thirty-sixth Herefordshire Regiment made in the late 1870s while the regiment served in the Himalayas. It represents, in silver, the prized game trophies of the mountains standing on a silver crag. At the top is an Ovis Amman, then two markhoors (wild goats), an ibex, and two Tibetan antelope. Since, as the author says, "nothing whatever happened in India between 1863 and 1875," the officers turned to stalking the mountains for trophies. The William IV Candelabrum was given to the Royal Regiment of Artillery for distinguished service by the king in 1833. It was placed in the regiment's mess in Woolwich, all four and a half feet of it, topped by a smallish silver lion. The British lion was an afterthought ordered by the king and placed on top of the foliate final--the only place left The silver Goodwood Trophy of 1847 st ands twenty inches tall and depicts the first duke of Richmond galloping to the left, King William III galloping to the right, and between them a wounded soldier on the ground. It was awarded that year to the winner of the annual competition on the Goodwood Racecourse on land owned by the dukes of Richmond. It then disappeared for a century. only to be acquired by Sir Desmond Brayley, a former gunner officer, who, in 1968, presented it to the Royal Artillery, his old regiment, for its mess.

It stands to reason that the military is a literal-minded group, and so their mess trophies are triumphs of realism. A silver statuette of Mohan Singh of the Fourteenth or King George's Own Ferozepore Silths, commemorates the action at Gully Ravine on Gallipoli in June 1915. The Sepoy soldier is in the act of throwing a homemade grenade at the Turkish trenches, with the makings of other grenades on the ground. These were simply old condensed milk cans stuffed with gun cotton. The milk was made by Nestle, and the cans are so marked on the trophy. A sturdy silver mule made in 1929 for the mess of the Seventeenth (Nowshera) Mountain Battery, Royal Artillery, carries the wheels and axle of a screw gun introduced in 1914. Eight such mules were needed to transport all parts of the gun and its ammunition.

The largest piece of military silver discussed here is a shooting trophy that stands four and a half feet tall, weighs fifty-two kilos, and is said to hold sixty-four pints of champagne. It is a huge covered bowl on a stand made in Canton lathe mid - l860s at a cost of [pound]6,000 that was subscribed by the Hong Kong and Shanghai Volunteer Corps to send to the Volunteer units in Britain as the prize for an annual shooting competition. The Peninsular and Orient Steam Navigation Company brought the "cup" to England free, but customs, humorless as ever, levied duty of [pound]125, which was only waived by invoking the National Rifle Association and its friends in Parliament. The oversized handles of the cup are imperial five-clawed dragons, and crowded uncomfortably lathe center of the lid is a huddle of foo dogs. The China Challenge Cup continues to be contested to this day at Bisley by marksmen of the Territorial Army.