No 22. The tale of 3 Riding Boots.

Having written 21 Posts so far, I’ve carried out a review of what I have covered so far in my collection, and what is left, and also reviewed how well the blog is being read.

To the latter, minimal!!!  I’ve had 238 hits (people who have looked at a post, either deliberately or accidentally) and 2 comments have been made.

On top of that are those who have registered to receive an automated communication of each copy that I post. (Originally I was told that facility was being withdrawn, but that appears not to be the case.) I have no idea how many there are, nor is there any way in the system of finding out. I can see that 7 of my 21 posts, mainly recent ones, have not been accessed at all.   Anyway, I will still continue to write them as I enjoy researching and writing and the research increases my knowledge. If I get one leg convertee it will have all been worthwhile. (Apologies - Janet Webb. Morecambe and Wise show).

So far I have written about 69 legs out of my total collection of 158, and I have included legs from 32 different categories with 7 categories remaining to be discussed.

You may have realised that a large number of those 69 legs fall in either a smoking or drinking category, which is therefore areas that I search at antique fairs. Those categories include pipe tampers, lighters, bottle openers, corkscrews, cheroot cutters, bottle stoppers and more.    

 

This week I have an interesting topic. It concerns one specific leg style but 3 instances.

1.To reiterate I told you in Blog No 18 that I owned a very smart 7-inch-high leather table lighter in the shape of a Hunting Boot. I bought it at  an antique fair in Uttoxeter in 2018.

Back in September, we again visited Uttoxeter and I saw its twin but with a different stallholder. I did examine it thoroughly but was not tempted to buy it… a decision I later regretted!!

2. November 7 it became part of my collection, in fact giving me a pair, albeit unlike ceramics, not an identical pair. This is a picture of the pair.

The new addition is on the right (No 158); it is no so smart, rougher round the top of the boot, and you can see that the mechanisms are not the same. Also, this is a gas lighter, with a smaller fuel compartment, stamped with Ronson and a trademark.

These are the two different fuel holders, on the left for gas, on the right for petrol.

The reason I went back for the second boot was heavily influenced by the inscriptions on the sole and heel. Check this photo

 

     

You can see some form of scribe has been used to score some permanent and deep markings. For a start it reads 1910 to 1962 on the sole and there appears to be 2 signatures. 1910 is again on the heel, in red biro, but I have been unable to decipher the names.

Mary and I have looked at the soles very carefully, and our conclusion is that 1910 was first written on the heel in red biro and signed. But the material on the heel is harder than the sole, and we believe that the inscriber was unhappy with the initial work, and wrote 1910 to 1962 on the sole, at first in red biro (that can be seen) and then used a stronger tool to achieve a deeper inscription. Then a signature has been added in the instep.  So!!, this conclusion changes the view about 2 signatures, and in fact whilst the signatures cannot be identified, they do both appear to end in “ck” suggesting two attempts by one person.

3. I then set about searching the net to look for a similar boot and came up with another Boot shaped table lighter. The web entry also included the heading…

 Table Lighter, N.C.O. Club Burtonwood, England --Leather Riding Boot

 ..together with a photograph showing the same mechanism as my first boot. The entry gives no indication how the boot is linked to Burtonwood. Burtonwood was a very large second world war RAF military base near Warrington, Cheshire. It was open from 1940 to the mid 60’s which does not jell with the inscribed lower year of 2010. No doubt the NCO club would have been a club where lighters would have been on Officers tables, so the link is feasible, but unproven.  As antique dealers say, provenance is critical, and I’m afraid I can find nothing definitive to link the lighter with the camp.  Incidentally, I did scan the Ronson lighters web site, but found no references to a leg table lighter.

Coincidentally amongst many photos and memorabilia about the  Burtonwood Base is a regular reference to someone known as McCormick .. a name also ending ck?

A very interesting exercise but  with a few unanswered questions!!