Auctions Imperial 2018 Arms & Armor November
Lot 224:
Description
A sougias, or folding knife, the appurtenance of educated and well-to-do Greeks for trimming quill pens and other tasks, as well as self-defense. The case wrought of silver and finely engraved, nielloed and gilded in classic Epirus style, with lion’s heads, stars, and flowers and terminating in a monster’s head, the broad blade with clipped tip and profiled spine and pierced and gilded silver toggle, retaining its original handwrought suspension chain set with eight gilded and punched silver disks and bearing a paper tag inscribed, LORD BYRON’S CLASP KNIFE / DR. S.G. HOWE COLL / H. RICHARDS LOAN. Early 19th century. Very light wear. Overall length (open) 16.8cm. George Gordon Byron, Sixth Lord Byron, was England’s greatest Romantic Era poet. He led an adventurous, often dangerous, existence and at age 35 journeyed to Greece to join the revolution and fight the Ottomans. Given command over a brigade of Suliots, he was preparing an attack on the Ottoman stronghold of Lepanto, but died in Missolonghi on April 19, 1824. Byron’s passing was mourned throughout the world. He became a national hero to the Greeks and his renown as a poet grew in England, Europe and America. Samuel Gridley Howe M.D. (1801-1876,) noted American abolitionist, was so inspired by Lord Byron’s cause, that he sailed for Greece in 1824 with the intention of fighting by Byron’s side. Howe arrived just weeks after Byron succumbed to fever, nonetheless fighting for six years against the Ottomans at Missolonghi, Crete, and other locations, and assisting Byron’s close friend and protégé, Alexandros Mavrokordatos, among other Greek notables. Howe acquired Byron’s helmet, sword and a number of other military effects before returning to the U.S. in 1830; the helmet was repatriated to Greece in 1926, donated to the Ethnographic Museum, Athens (now the National Historical Museum) by Howe’s daughter, Maud Howe Elliot, which memorialized her father’s service to Greece as well. Howe’s eldest daughter, Laura Elizabeth Richards, celebrated American author, presented the claspknife to her son, Henry Howe Richards, at the beginning of the 20th century. The image of a portrait of Samuel Gridley Howe as a Greek freedom fighter, painted by John Elliot c. 1830, now housed at Brown University, is shown for reference only and is not included with this lot. Condition II
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