AN ITALIAN COMB-MORION, CIRCA 1580 formed in one piece with a rounded crown rising to a high rope

AN ITALIAN COMB-MORION, CIRCA 1580 formed in one piece with a rounded crown rising to a high roped medial comb decorated to either side of its apex and base with incised lines, and an integral brim turned down at each side and rising to an acute point at the front and the rear (the front point bruised), its edge decorated with a file-roped inward turn bordered by a narrow groove, the base of the crown pieced at the nape with a pair of holes for the attachment of a plume-holder (missing) and encircled by six (originally fourteen) lining-rivets with brass rosette-washers, retaining its original blued finish overall The morion is one of a series offered for sale between the World Wars by W. H. Fenton & Sons of 11 New Oxford Street, London. An undated circular of Fenton (photographic copy held in Royal Armouries Library, Leeds) illustrates a morion almost identical to that offered here. Fenton was selling the morions by at least 1933. According to a later verbal report of his armourer, Theodore Egli, they had been obtained in Ireland. Examples are now to be seen in the Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds, Inv.No. IV. 449 (A. R. Dufty & W. Reid European Armour in the Tower of London, London, 1968, pl. CII.c), the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, Acc. Nos Hen. M. 32, 33 & 34-1933 (Ian Eaves, Catalogue of European Armour at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Woodbridge, Suffolk, & Rochester, N.Y., 2002, pp. 153-5, ill.), and the Glasgow Museum and Art Gallery. The group also included "Spanish" morions, examples of which are once again to be seen in the Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (Eaves, op. cit., pp. 161-2).