Arms, Armour & Militaria

THIEVES have stolen a collection of war medals Ð including five Victoria Crosses Ð awarded to 12 of New ZealandÕs most highly decorated servicemen. The burglary took place shortly after 1am on December 2 at the Army Museum in Waiouru.

At 3ft 21/4in (97cm) long, this exceptionally rare Scottish Highland two-hand sword or claymore dates to the third quarter of the 16th century. So rare is it, in fact, that no other example has appeared on the market in recent years.

This massive silver-gilt shield of Achilles, by Rundell, Bridge & Rundell of London, lost to scholars for the better part of the 20th century, appeared at Sotheby's on December 18 after resurfacing in Belgium.

Stella Show Management have said that Antiques at the Armory, the January 18-20 antiques show at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York City, will go ahead as planned.

Two different pistols with very different stories sold at provincial auctions in the UK in October.

CHARTERHOUSE auctioneers in Sherborne, have broken the auction record for a Military Medal group only two months after the previous one was set.

IT was the first war painting by a Scottish artist to be exhibited in Scotland and was extensively discussed in the Edinburgh and Glasgow newspapers of January 1941.

Suffolk antique tool auctioneer Tony Murland (10% buyer’s premium) is known for his hyperbolic cataloguing but the description accompanying this nearly 400-year-old horn handled hunting knife was a classic.

OLD film footage of youngsters playing amid the rubble of the Blitz-ravaged London showed that even in our darkest hour war could be turned into a game.

NEW YORK’s fairs scene is in some turmoil following a massive rent hike at the Seventh Regiment Armory on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, the city’s chosen venue for art and antiques fairs.

ON December 28, 1792 Anglo-Irish statesman, orator and philosopher Edmund Burke (1729-97) enacted the melodrama in Parliament that became known as the Dagger Scene.

"They kept their resolution longer than I expected, keeping us in action from 7 in the morning till [?] in the afternoon and to carry the scene on in a military manner they came down upon us, sounding the charge and their army colours flying, and in this manner continued till they were beaten to atoms. "

On September 10, Litts, the UK’s largest retailer of sporting guns, is holding its inaugural auction of stock.

“WE will make a name for ourselves and Australia tomorrow.” This was how Captain Shout fired up his band of troops the night before the assault at Gallipoli in the First World War.

Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton was one of the most notorious British commanders of the American Revolution. After leading a series of successful operations in both the north and south, he returned home after the war as one of the most famous men in England, sat for a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds and began a long-term affair with actress and royal consort Mary Robinson.

Before The Great War the Lincoln engineering company, William Foster and Co, was synonymous with the very best threshing machines. By 1918, managing director Sir William Tritton, together with Major W.G. Wilson, had been credited by the Royal Commission as the inventor of an armoured fighting vehicle forever known as the tank.

AN unseen and apparently unique collection of photographs, letters and maps that illuminates the campaigns of Field Marshall Montgomery in the Second World War has emerged at Kent auctioneers Watermans.

MUSSOLINI’s son-in-law and foreign minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano, would have done well to heed the imagery of this black glazed terracotta head when another version of it came into his possession.

WEDNESDAY, December 14 sees Thomas Del Mar Ltd’s inaugural sale of arms and armour at Sotheby’s Olympia.

The Scottish Executive is considering introducing a licensing scheme for the trade in non-domestic knives and banning the sale of swords. Both measures could impact heavily on the antique arms market.