Gaunt items in NAM
Dear Julian,
This is what I know of the transfer of the Gaunt items:
...
During the course of its history the firm collected many items of military interest. In 1955 the bulk, amounting to six tons of assorted regalia, valuable military prints, documents and uniforms, was presented to the Museum of the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst where it was temporarily housed in the India Room.
Further gifts of old pattern books were made and now these, with the above, form part of the National Army Museum, which was opened by Her Majesty the Queen on 15 July 1960.
...
Well I can imagine what happens to 6 tons of uncatalogued, unsorted and temporarily housed items. After a while it must be a ramshackle lot. We all know good badges stored like that have legs, sorry, lugs.
Birmingham Museum has the Gaunt Collection.
I am aware of the Firmin Archives. The index is on line (and very interesting), but that is as far as I have seen it. I understand there are pattern books. Do you know what is in them?
regards,
btns
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