Overall height: 48cm (19in)
With painted ash hoops, rope tension system, and brass cylinder, hand emblazoned with crossed lances, the Prince of Wales’s feathers, and Queen’s crown, flanked by Battle Honours from Salamanca to the end of the Second World War. Makers’s label of George Potter & Co., Aldershot. Height of drum: 37cm (14.7in).
George Potter (1846-1927) was the younger son of the military musical instrument maker Henry Samuel Potter (1810-1876) of West Street, Charing Cross, London. In 1868 he established George Potter & Co at Bank Street, Aldershot, as an independent drum and instrument maker. He later bought the Charing Cross business and continued it under the Henry Potter name. During Potters’ heyday in the 1920s and 30s the firm’s catalogues further offered silver ceremonial drums, drum-major’s maces, regimental plaques, drum tables and other associated items. George’s son George James Ravenscroft Potter (1881-1968) served the First World War and afterwards opened the well known shop at the intersection of Aldershot’s Queen’s Road and Grosvenor Road, aka ‘Potter’s Corner’ in 1918. His firm continued the hand emblazoning of band drums in the traditional manner until the introduction of rod tensioned and transfer decorated drums in the 1960s, and as presentation pieces until the 1990s.