Antiques fair bargains.

[Martin Goldstraw]

Sunday last saw Mrs G. and I meandering around a local antiques fair and I, as usual, had my eye open for anything heraldic. I found two bargains, one cost me £1 and the other twice as much. My most expensive purchase caught my eye because it had upon it the arms of a baronet of Nova Scotia and when I got home, I looked them up. The arms appear to be those of the Dick Lauder baronets but there is a subtle difference in the 2nd and third quarters where (I believe) there should be a fesse, Azure, between three mullets, Gules but on my piece, there is a crescent instead. There is also an escutcheon of pretense.

Wikipedia records the fesse as wavy but here it is not (see blazon below).

Dick-Lauder
Arms: Quarterly: for Lauder (Lord Fountainhall's Arms of 1699), 1st and 4th: Gules, a griffin rampant within a bordure, Argent; and for Dick, 2nd and 3rd Argent, a fesse, wavy, Azure, between three mullets, Gules.

Crests:1st (for Lauder), a tower, with portcullis down, and the head and shoulders of a sentinel appearing above the battlements, in a watching posture, Proper; 2nd (for Dick) A stag’s head, erased, Proper, attired, Or.

Supporters: Two lions rampant, Argent
Motto (on gas brackets):Ut migraturus habita
Mottos above the Crests: (Lauder) Turris prudentia custos (Dick) Virtute

Not a bad buy for a couple of quid, I shall keep my pens and pencils in it in the office.

My £1 bargain caught my eye because, from a distance, I thought I had spotted a quaich. Closer inspection revealed armorial bearings and monogram which were immediately recognisable to me as those of Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands who became Queen in 1890 and reigned from 1898 (her mother was Regent from 1890 to 1898) until 1948 when she abdicated in favour of her daughter Juliana. The quaich (if indeed that is what it is) is extremely tarnished pewter which may or may not be redeemable but as an heraldic memento it has to be worth one pound of any heraldry addict's money.



P.S. Even if it should turn out that I am able to bring some lustre back to this item, I won't be drinking out of it; pewter of a certain age contains a large percentage of lead!

[Ton de Witte]

The arms are not the arms of Queen Wilhelmina but the arms of Princess Juliana 1909-1948 and 1980-2004, the escutcheon is Mecklenburg.

[Martin Goldstraw]

Thank you Ton ... how strange then that the item appears to be celebrating the reign of Queen Wilhemena!

[Ryan Shuflin]

The coat of arms matches those in this book: http://archive.org/stream/grangestgilesba00smitgoog#page/n10/mode/2up I think the inescutcheon represents a fief?

[Ton de Witte]

Thank you Ton ... how strange then that the item appears to be celebrating the reign of Queen Wilhemena!

Well it says 1898-1948 which was also the 50th aniversary of the Queen it could have been made to celebrate that because Juliana did not become Queen until the 6th of September 1948 and the aniversary was on the 31st of August 1948.
Juliana had before that acted as Regent twice in 1947 and 1948 and was the only child of the Queen so you see a lot of things which depict them both (portraits or arms).