any Deeks buckles out there?

[OC Richard]

Back in the 1980s a shop called Lark In The Morning used to set up its booth at some of our California Highland Games. Their main thing was folk music (they had amazing vintage instruments) and they would have vintage Irish flutes, fiddles, mandolins, Highland pipes, uilleann pipes, and so forth.

For a short time the shop had a small selection of hand-made buckles (when they sold out there were no more) and I bought two, one for a 1.5 inch belt such as would be worn with trousers and the other for a 2.5 inch Pipers' belt.

I only wore the big one a few times, then like an eejit I sold it.

The smaller one, seen below, I've worn daily since I bought it in 1984.

Hand-engraved on the reverse is

C F Deeks Eugene OR
Nickel Silver 1984

I believe the maker's name was Charles.

It's made from two sheets of German Silver. One sheet has had the openings cut out with a saw, then the two sheets were soldered together. The design was lifted straight out of Celtic Art: The Methods Of Construction by George Bain (Plate 1, Pg 45 of my edition).

Do any XMarkers have one of these buckles? Care to share photos? Thanks!



BTW most of the Celtic designs seen on brooches, jewellery, buckles, cloth and clothing etc have been lifted straight out of Bain, almost never giving Bain credit.

There would be more, except for the fact that the book is intended to teach the reader how to create their own original Celtic art, so the vast majority of the illustrations are explanatory diagrammes rather than finished pieces. All of the finished pieces have been lifted and slapped on every sort of object imaginable. It's an unfitting perversion of the purpose of the book.