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    Ed_Haynes

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    Posts posted by Ed_Haynes

      Who has ribbons ?

      in Germany: Imperial: The Orders, Decorations and Medals of The Imperial German States

      Posted

      Yes, only a governmental place like the Smithsonian Institution is stuck in this regard. They have a very nice medal collection, of which none is on display or ever likely to be on display. But they also have boxes and boxes and boxes of US WWI Victory Medals, "gifted" to the SI by well-meaning next-of-kin who believed that their husband's or father's medal would be somehow displayed in the US national museum. It will be kept it storage because, by law, the Smithsonian can not do otherwise, they cannot deaccession a gift from the public. Until the tags fall off these medals, it will be possible, if you wished to know, to say which medal belonged to whom. If anyone cared, which no one does. It is all very sad.

      I guess this is better than the British pattern of medals being gifted to regimental museums and lying forgotten in a drawer somewhere until they're sold out the back door or simply thrown out in some office cleaning.

      Perhaps only a multi-generation chain of collector custodians will really care for these things and grant them the research they deserve, but then this brings us back to the problem of the introduction of poison ino the system in the form of spuriously "invented" groups.

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      Display of medals, creation of bars

      in Preservation & Restoration of Military Artifacts

      Posted · Edited by Ed_Haynes

      This is not an easy one, Mark, and I sincerely thank you for raising it directly, openly, and honestly. While we (both the two of us and our wider community) may disagree, I think it is important for our attitudes to be fully and clearly understood and expressed. Andi t is equally important for us to disagree agreeably, as GENTLEMEN. While harsh vocabulary may be required, please know that no finger-pointing or personal attack is intended in what I am about to say.

      This may be lengthy, and for that I do not apologize, for I truly think it is an important issue that deserves full discussion. I cannot think of any other issue on which I may be classed as a "conservative", though this one comes close to being "it".

      Background and perspective: I am a phalerist. A medal collector, if you will (must). Period. I do not now collect uniforms, though I once had a few. Other than family uniforms (which I don't think of as "collecting" and about which I have no real choice) and one tunic that has, for me, significant phaleristic link-up value, I disposed of all of them years ago. This was partially due to storage problems but largely due tolsimple lack of interest. Uniforms lacked, for me, the evocative history which medals held (and still hold). I am also an unapologetic professional historian, and come to this phaleristic study in large part by that road. The history that medals represent is vitally and centrally important to me, the ability to rescurrect an otherwise lost indivdual (and era) is my motivating factor. My area of specialization is post-1947 and pre-1947 medals to the Indian Army, almost all of which are named. A medal (loose or grouped) is uniquely (and here I am using the word properly) linked to a person whose history and deeds can, with research and luck, be recovered. Subordinate phaleristic fields have become things like Soviet and Mongolian ODM which, although not named, are usually numbered, and with even more research and even more luck the hidden stories can be divulged, some day. With few exceptions, unnamed medals no longer hold much more than numismatic interest for me, except when mounted in legitimate original period groups which reflect a person, although he (or she) will likely remain forever anyonymous. For me, unifoms are no more than a curious backdrop for medals, a deep background scenery to be ignored in exchange for a focus on the main attraction: The medals are the history. I realise (but must admit I do not understand this) that for uniform collectors, medals are no more than sparkly additions to dress up a uniform. OK, I don't get it -- guilty as charged m'lord. When I have been offered medals together with the person's uniform, I have passed on the group, not wishing to sever the two, although I must admit that I have secretly wished the uniforms had not been there to complicate matters. The nuisance costume was irrelevant and uninteresting, the medals were (and are) the focus.

      Basic attitudes: The medals are the focus, the historcal mesaage, the "core content". An individual's medals are his (or her) medals, named, numbered, or unnamed. Anything else is an attractive fraudulent invention, however fanciful, however pretty, but no more than an imagined fantastic made-up thing stripped out of history. When the medals are unnamed or unnumbered, research and provanance must be the only guide. I must admit that I have a couple of Soviet groups (with core numbered and researched decorations) where I have "restored" the strayed (unnumberd, unnamed) campaign medals, since these are among the very few groups that I intend someday to display. (More on this later.) And, to be quite honest, I feel extremely dirty and corrupt about having done this and am almost ashamed to admit I have committed this crime against history and nature. Medals are separate and distinct things, not pretty additions to a crop of cloth called a uniform. I am not sure how to make this clearer. Maybe the focused uniform collector would feel the same way if a button collector wanted to snip off the buttons and junk the uniform as so much irrelevant trash? Or see a uniform as merely a way to display buttons? I am not sure.

      Ownership vs. custody: Whatever "things" we collect (and I fervently hope, also study), they are simply not ours. We do not "own" them. The owner is the recipient, known or unknown, living or long since dead. We have paid rent (and sometimes a lot of rent) to host these things as our guests until we pass them on in years or decades to another custodian. We owe it to the legitmate owner (= the recipient) and to history to follow the Hippocratic Oath that doctors take: First do no harm. Do nothing irreversible, do not engrave our names on the medals, do not dye the unoforms pink just because we like pink, and do all that we can do to reunite missing medals (I have paid up to five times fair market value in the cause of group reunification -- ouch). These items -- whether uniforms, or medal groups, or even single medals -- are NOT "ours" to have our way with and do with (or to) them what we wish. Overly romantic? Overly historcal? Again, guilty as charged. When I hold in my hand medals to an Punjabi sepoy who died in captivity after Kut, how can you blame me?

      Display: I do not at present display ANY of my medals. Almost all of them live sadly and lonesome in bank vaults and I have only scans to fondle lovingly. I have (and I am seriously behind in my cataloging) something in excess of 300 groups and over 3000 individual medals (in and out of groups). The best I can hope for is a multi-drawer cabinet at home and two or three groups on the wall on a rotating basis. And this will require reclaiming space from my now-in-college-but-still-spatially-demanding daughter. The house next door is up for rent, and I am (no joke) tempted.

      To turn to your questions:

      Should loose medals stay loose ?

      If unattributed and unattributable (unnamed, unnumbered) and orphaned, of course. This medal was awarded to someone, and it is his (hers). To reassemble it and attribute it to another is criminal. It is not a "thing", it is part of a person's life. Admittedly, it is a person who whill be perpetually unknown (since his group was broken up by . . . someone . . . at some stage). Issued or unissued, we may never know, though I am prepared to take the conservative stance and assume that orphaned solo medals are (were) someone's and I would be unwilling to create a monster (think: Dr. Frankenstein) by recombinig loose pieces.

      I have seen British medal collectors that take the loose medals for a named soldier and properly mount them on ribbons, backed with cardboard, for display in glass cases. Is this ok ?

      If medals come on the original mount, leave it alone. Most of the medals I get come to me as naked groups, tied up with string and snipped off their original ribbons. Among British medal collectors (and I know the Germans will pull out their black lights and gag in Teutonic unison here), remounting is accepted and normal (though maybe too aggressively undertaken). Getting quality ribbon is now a big problem, but it is standard practice. But, then, these medals are named.

      If you acquire a loose medal without a ribbon.. should you put a ribbon on it for display ?

      Sure, as a single ribboned medal, with original ribbon if possible. Naked medals should be dressed.

      If you have a commanders neck award.. should it only be displayed in the case, or is it ok to hang on a uniform ?

      Keep it in the case, safe and secure and happy. Unless you know for a certainty that the uniform and the medal belonged to the same person. Anything else is something between intentional fraud and cimena costuming.

      If you have breast stars, should they be displayed on a uniform or left in a glass case ?

      I just answered that. Sorry, but the question seems to presuppose that medals without uniforms are somehow incomplete?! To paraphrase the old feminist challenge: A medal needs a uniform like a fish needs a bicycle.

      If you acquire, say, loose Italian medals, is it ?ok? to slide them back on the bar ?

      Unless you know they all belonged to the same person, of course not. To do so would be to manufacture a fake "group".

      For French uniforms, is it ?ok? to mount them on the uniforms individually (also applies to Austrian and Bulgarian) ?

      Same as above.

      When is the ?display? enough ?

      Sorry, I don't know what you are asking here, but see my comments on display above.

      UNASKED QUESTION: What is so wrong with "making" groups: And here I must apologize if I offend anyone, but, as my favorite one-liner from US history puts is "If this be treason, make the most of it." Making up a group that never existed from medals (or even ribbons) that never belonged together is, quite simply, fraud. I cannot see it is any different from the unethical eBay vendors for whom we as a community hold such legitimately unsuppressed disgust who manufacture "groups" of medals or faked ribbon bars or who, correspondingly but closely related, rip up previously mounted historical groups to maximise profit by flogging the medals individually. Like it or not, all these attitudes and actions feed off each other. It is all linked and we must accept this "inconvenient truth". We may feel ourselves somehow moral by saying: "Oh, I am just doing this to 'dress' this uniform. I know the groups are 'invented' and will never sell them as real." But what happens to your collection when you die in years or decades? Unless you want your entire collection to go with you on your flaming Viking funeral boat, they will go back into commerce, and will constitute even more poison in the communal phaleristic water from which the next generation(s) will drink. Do you want to be responsible for THAT??? Maybe you don't care? Maybe you should?

      Sorry for the length and, at times, for the tone, but I did want to be clear. Reasonable people may disagree, but I wanted my attitude to be unambiguously stated.

      Truly sorry if I offended anyone or stepped on any toes.

      :beer:

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      Saddam Husseins awards

      in Middle East & Arab States

      Posted

      Yes, I am convinced that, for the right price, a foreigner in Iraq could obtain "Saddam Hussein's" awards. Probably a piece of the "true cross" as well.

      There is so much mythology and disinformation around regarding his awards, that it is almost not worth offering corrections.

      :banger::banger:

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      Who has ribbons ?

      in Germany: Imperial: The Orders, Decorations and Medals of The Imperial German States

      Posted

      I guess only the late Neil O'Connor was able to to this without scorn since he was writing a series of books we all cherish.

      Who says "without scorn"? In his partial defense, he was operating in an era when the place of medal groups as (1) pieces of history and (2) things easily faked was not as well understood. As late as the 1970s, ripping apart named British groups was still seen as a legitimate practice. Values have changed, research has enlightend us, and ethics have improved.

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