Treasures: Martingale was meant for a horse
Dear Helaine and Joe: Enclosed are photos of a belt with ornaments on it. There are six circles on it, and I think each one must have a special meaning. Can you tell me what they mean? Why was this made? What organization does it represent?
C. H., Whitefield, N.H.
Dear C. H.: One of the photos shows the owner bending this around in a circle like a belt, but the circumference is so small it would not fit even a person with a wasp-like waist. No, this is not a belt, and it was never meant for humans to wear.
This was designed to adorn a working draft horse as it pulled a wagon or some other conveyance, often in a parade or on May Day. The six circles are known to collectors as “horse brasses.” They were used on a variety of horse tack including terrets, swingers, faceplates, rosettes, nameplates and martingales.
The piece is part of a martingale, but it probably never adorned a horse. Unfortunately, we are not horse people, so we can only relate what our research tells us. But in short (actually, very short), a “martingale” is a strap (i.e. a harness strap) that is sometimes called a “breast-strap.”
The strap is the perfect place to display the decorative brasses, which might consist of geometric designs (moons, stars, hearts, etc.), political and royal portraits, castles, crowns, lions, horses, wheat, symbols for brewing companies, Masonic symbols, rare pieces with colorful pottery centers or bells that actually ring.
This example features representations of British coins. One is a halfpenny with a date that looks like 1943, a sixpence dated 1953, a penny with the image of Britannia dated 1903 and a farthing with a wren dated 1968. This last one is a fantasy coin since the last British farthing was minted in 1956. The farthing is worth 1/4 of a British penny. Interestingly, the wren is symbolic because it is Britain’s smallest bird on Britain’s smallest coin.
It is possible that the 1953 sixpence piece was made to commemorate Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, but this is only conjecture. Collecting horse brasses became a hobby sometime around 1880, but the horse brass itself traces its history back to the European Iron Age. In Roman times they were called “phalerae.”
Examples made from cast brass are generally earlier than those made from stamped brass. For a time, modern examples were sold at tourist attractions and gift shops because they were very British and very horsey. C.H.’s martingale with six horse brasses was made sometime after 1968 and we would give it a circa (plus or minus 10 years) date of 1970.
This makes it about 50 years old, but horse brasses of this vintage and later are abundant and have only a modest monetary value. Currently the retail value of this piece appears to be between $50 and $85 and might be of interest to both a horse brass collector and a numismatist.