CLAN CHIEF’S MAZER

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 January 1928, Page 4

CLAN CHIEF’S MAZER

SOLD IN 15 SECONDS. LONDON, November 23. An early, fifteenth century mazer—a simple drinking bowl of maple wood bound with silver—was sold for £lO,OOO at Hurcomb’s auction rooms yesterday. It was offered at £9750, for mazers .are rare and in ardent demand. About isixty are known, and most of them belong to Oxford and Cambridge colleges and to City companies. f A catalogue fluttered in a dealer s '* . j — coxa

hand. It was a gesture worth £250, and was followed by a pause in which the onlookers drew two breaths. There was an appearance of casual inquiry on the auctioneer’s face. It passed, and the-' sale 1 was complete after one bid by Crichton’s, of Bond Street. Fifteen seconds had sufficed for the entire business. This mazer was the property of Sir Malcolm MacGregor, chief of the Clan MacGregor. It has been in his family for almost 500 years. The rim is bound with silver, and the silver is inscribed: “Ninian Bannachtyne. Lard, of ye. Camis. Sown to. Umquhyle. Robart Bannachtyne of ye Camis. A modern transcription would read: “Ninian Bannatyne, lord of Kames, son to the late Robert Bannatyne of Kames.” Kames is an old estate in the Isle of Bute, and the mazer came to the MacGregors through intermarriage with the Bannatynes. The mazer is ten inches in diameter, and has a silver base and silvei’ straps

between the base and rim. There is also a carved bone cover. The “print” or knob in the centre of the interior of the bowl is silver-gilt, and in the form of an heraldic lion. It is surrounded by four medallions of the arms of Stuart, Douglas, Hamilton, and Crawford.

The last mazer to be sold, which approached the beauty of this.piece, realised £BOOO. The sale of a small Book of Devotions that had belonged to Catherine Parr, the last Queen of Henry VIII., was second in importance to that of the mazer, and exceeded it in romantic interest. The book, which is perhaps two inches square, and is handwritten in Old English characters, went for £260 to Messrs S. J. Phillips. A Latin inscription at the end of the book is translated as follows: —“Formerly the private manual of Catherine Parr, Queen and survivor of Henry VIII., given to the Lady Tuke, daughter of the Lord Bryan Tuke (one of the Privy Council of the aforesaid King) and my great grandmother, by her passed on to the Lary Margaret Hastings, my cousip, to whom I am thankfully indebted for it. October 7, in the year of the incarnation of omLord 1669, Thos. Lawrence,”