Provenance: Major S.H. ‘Harry’ Garrard (1874-1946)
1871 pattern officer’s helmet of silvered / white metal, with edges bound in gilt metal brass, the skull applied with a gilt rococo cartouche containing the Herfordshire hart in silvered metal surmounted by a post 1902 crown also in gilt metal, the whole complete with gilt ear rosettes, brass chin chain and black horse hair plume capped with a gilt rosette. Contained in original carrying tin by Hawkes & Co., 14 Piccadilly, London, bearing the name ‘S.H. Garrard Esq. / Herts. Yeomanry’.
Major S.H. ‘Harry’ Garrard (1874-1946), of Welton Place, Daventry, Northamptonshire, was the great-grandson of goldsmith Robert Garrard Sr, and inherited control of the British Crown Jewellers on the death of his father in 1900. In 1911 Garrard’s craftsmen created Queen Mary’s Crown for the Coronation and the Imperial Crown of India worn by King George V later that year at the Delhi Durbar. The Imperial State Crown was remounted by Garrard & Co., in 1937. Educated at Harrow where he was a contemporary of Winston Churchill, Major Garrard lived the life of a country squire and held a commission in the Hertfordshire Yeomanry until 1909. He remained in charge of Garrard & Co. until his death in 1946, and in 1915 established Garrard Engineering & Manufacturing at Swindon. He married May Eleanor Cazenove and had six daughters.