Militaria

 Another web site which is always full of interesting articles is The Maine Antiques Digest. I spotted on there yesterday a piece bout a Civil War auction in America which netted $1.6 million. The highlight of the sale was a Confederate battle flag that sold for almost $60,000. You can read more HERE

One of the local papers when I lived at home in Galshiels was the Southern Reporter, which is still going strong toady and I've just been sent a cutting from a friend in the Scottish Borders concerning a piece in last week's paper about a rare sword that has just sold at Bonhams.

The sword dates from 1705, but has a much older blade manufactured sometime in the 14th century. It had been passed down through the Douglas family to the late Sir Alec Douglas Home of the Hirsel, former British Prime Minister, and sold for £10,800 at Bonhams' sale of antique arms and armour, on July 28.

The inscriptions and heart referred to on the sword hark back to the famous journey of Sir James Douglas to the Holy Land with King Robert Bruce's heart. It was a pilgrimage which ended with Douglas's death in battle against the Moors in Spain in 1330. However, experts say the date of 1331 on the blade is almost certainly commemorative.  The story of this crusade with the heart of Bruce became part of the Douglas family history and the heart on this sword recalls the actual earlier sword carried by James Douglas on the ill-fated crusade to the Holy Land. Bruce's body is buried in Dunfermline Abbey, and his heart in Melrose Abbey, which was just a couple of miles away from where we lived.  His embalmed heart was taken on the crusade to the Holy Land by his lieutenant and friend Sir James, but he only reached Moorish Granada where it became a talisman for the Scottish contingent at the Battle of Teba. 

The fine English silver-hilted broadsword bears the maker's mark of Thomas Vicaridge. 
It carries an imperial crown and a crowned lion rampant between the inscription 'Pro Rege Et Regno Anno 1331', and on the other edge a similar panel enclosing one of the devices of the Douglas family, a wild man (wodewose) with a heart on his left breast between the inscription 'For Strength In Stier This (the heart] I Bier' (for strength in battle this heart I bear).

As I've always said it's not just the value of an item that pushes the price at auction, it's the provenance and the story that goes with the item. There are few items that have such a fabulous legend attached to it as this sword does,

An iconic item from America's history is to come up for auction in October it's been announced by Sotheby's. It's a swallow-tail American flag that was found at the site of the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. This was the infamous battle at which Lt Col. Custer and his 7th Cavalry fought against the Sioux Indians in the Black Hills of Montana and suffered a crushing defeat.  More than 200 men were killed and the flag was retrieved from beneath the body of a fallen soldier –  almost all the rest of the military artefacts of the 7th Cavalry Regiment were carried away by the victorious Lakota Sioux.

The flag has been owned by the Detroit Institute of Arts since the late 19th century and now they have decided to sell it to fund other purchases. There's an estimate of between $2 and $5 million on the flag. The current record for a similar item is for an American flag dating from 1776 which sold for $12.3 million. Would anyone be surprised if this flag did not do better? The Battle of Little Bighorn in which 210 men were killed has been portrayed in films, books and television as a seminal moment in American history and so the sky may well be the limit for this flag. 

The Enigma machine was  developed in Germany after World War I and was used by the German military as their main device for secure wireless communications until the end of World War II. The Enigma machine was constantly developed through World War 2 with each one more complex and harder to break than its predecessors.

In 1929, the Poles intercepted an Enigma machine that was being shipped from Berlin, but not as diplomatic baggage. The Poles were able to determine the wiring of the rotors and were able to dicipher German Army secret messages throughout the 1930s. In 1939, the German Army increased the complexity of their Enigma machines and the Poles, realizing time was running out before a Germans invasion, shared their work with the French and the British. The British information went on to Bletchley Park, where the secret service had established its Code and Cipher School for the purpose of breaking the Germans' message traffic. British mathematicians and cryptographers, chess players, bridge players, and crossword puzzle fans, among them Alan Turing, managed to crack the  German Enigma machines and the whole course of the war was altered as a result.

Last year we had an Antiques Roadshow at Bletchley Park, where they have an Enigma machine and I was surprised to see another one, dating from 1937, up for sale by an antique dealer in New Orleans. M.S. Rau is the company and you can find out more HERE. It's being offered at $112,500.

A friend in New York sent me this very interesting article on Bloomberg.com all about the craze for collectiing high-powered binoculars. I must admit its not something I had given a lot of thought to until now! Read more HERE it really is very interesting.