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Lot # 1777: Turn of the Century Tennis Finials and Two Flat Top Racquets

Category: All Sports

Starting Bid: $750.00

Bids: 0 (Bid History)

Time Left: Auction closed

Lot / Auction Closed




This lot is closed. Bidding is not allowed.

Item was in Auction "June 2005",
which ran from 5/30/2005 12:00 AM to
6/26/2005 9:00 PM



This wonderful 4-piece collection of turn-of-the-century tennis equipment recalls Noel Coward's observation that only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun. With tennis booming on the manicured lawns of upper-crust England, these items surely got plenty of use in the midday sun, between sloe gin fizzes. Includes 2 extraordinarily rare 26" all-wood flat top racquets stamped "Delmar" with rounded, tapered head, original strings, convex wedge, darker brown "hounds tooth" gripping area and circular handles covered by nailed-down leather handband. Strings on one racquet are broken, perfectly taut on the other. VG and EX, respectively. Best of all are the two 45" long finials -- ornamental wooden columns between which the net was strung, each with an intricately designed metal globe affixed on top. Each has the familiar Wright & Ditson logo burned in of the company tennis player. Present are the two metal hooks for tying the net to the post (one hook has a remnant of an actual net still attached) and 2 1/2" metal stakes that drove the poles into the ground. Finials are overall EX. An echo of the genteel days of tennis.

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