Firebacks

Miscellaneous stamp firebacks

54 results

  1. 774

    va_49.jpg
    495 x 745 mm

    Description: Arched shape with bead edging; from top, large bead with four pairs of small beads in a cross shape, text with pellet surrounded by eight beads on each side of 'G', and at bottom.

    Notes: Made by, and bearing the initials of Eric Gill and his wife, Mary, in 1930.

    Inscription: E&M / G / MCM / XXX

    Manufactured: in 1930 at Loosley Row Foundry in the Chilterns area of England.

    Current location: Victoria & Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, Kensington & Chelsea, Greater London, England.

    Museum number: M.4-1983 (part of the Victoria & Albert Museum museum group)

  2. 1067

    va_57b.jpg
    >650 x 810 mm

    Description: Fragment; rectangular shape; ovolo-moulded edging (top and sides); six stamps, in two columns of three, taking the form of a long-pointed arrow head within a circlet of small curls.

    Notes: The stamps are of an unfamiliar type with some similarity to the heraldic symbol for ermine. Because only the left part of the fireback has survived it is not known how many original columns of this stamp there were.

    Manufactured: in the 16th century possibly in the Weald area of England.

    Current location: Victoria and Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, Kensington and Chelsea, London, England.

    Museum number: M.148-1915 (part of the Victoria & Albert Museum museum group)

  3. 1061

    withyham,_rectory cottage.jpg
    801 x 685 mm

    Description: Triple-facetted arched rectangular shape; ovolo-moulded edging (top and sides); bottom centre, a vertical distaff or spindle repeated twice; to each side a fillet-edged oval containing the initials S and W; above, either side of the distaffs, two more ovals perpendicular to the first two, with the date split between them; above each distaff, an oval rotated as at the bottom, the initials I T split between them; at the base, a blank rectangular panel.

    Notes: An unusual shaped fireback. Formerly at Skipreed, Chiddingstone Hoath, Kent. An example was recorded by J. Starkie Gardner in one of his scrapbooks (Victoria and Albert Museum, Archive of Art and Design (AAD/2014/8)), marked '[?]Warris Westerham Kent'.

    Copies of this fireback are known.

    Inscription: I T / 16 63 / S W

    Manufactured: in 1663 possibly in the Weald area of England.

    Current location: not known.

    Citation: Town, E. & McShane, A., 2020, Marking Time: Objects, People and their Lives 1500-1800 (New Haven, Yale Center for British Art), p. 213.

  4. 943

    woodchurch,_cherry gardens.jpg
    1373 x 752 mm

    Description: Rectangular shape; ogee moulded edging (top and sides); crowned falcon stamp repeated three times and spaced evenly along the top; separated initials close inside outer falcon stamps; two andiron slots.

    Notes: The stamp, which was originally a badge of Queen Anne Boleyn, and first used in the letters patent of her Marquisate of Pembroke, comprises a falcon with a crown upon its head and holding a sceptre, standing upon a tree stump, from which extends a sprig of red and white roses. The badge was later adopted by Queen Elizabeth I. The probability must exist that the initials TB relate to a member of the Boleyn family.

    Inscription: T B

    Manufactured: in the 16th or 17th century in the Weald area of England.

    Current location: in private hands, Woodchurch, Kent, England.