C. Some richly decorated cue
butts:
Signed '4-point' Hiolle dating from the late 1800s or the early 1900s. Superb intricate decoration. Carved rosewood and maple.
Bevelled and adorned with 2 opposite triangular plates, one made of mother-of-pearl
and the other of wood.
Below the decoration between two light-coloured points.
The
signature is on one of them and the front of the
butt is provided with a decal, the ancestor of sticker.
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Other
details about the cue.
Weight = 520 g, length = 141 cm. Diameters of the butt end, the joint
collar and the ferrule (all three made of ivory) = 36, 20 and 12 mm, respectively.
Leather tip. Wooden shaft screw. Balance point at 40 cm from the butt
end.
'8-point'
Brunswick (very rare) made of ebony and maple, inlaid with
mother-of-pearl and finely carved. Its two opposite triangular plates
are surrounded by red, yellow and black wooden veneers and its large escutcheon
is monogrammed. Gilt signature is engraved on the butt.
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'8-point' Hiolle (rare): carved and inlaid ebony.
Rare '3-piece' Van Laere of variable weight: sipo inlaid with 40 white dots, 60 coloured thin wood slices
and rings probably made of ambrolithe.
'2-stage 4-point' Van Laere (rare): carved Macassar ebony, padauk, bird's-eyes maple, thin wood slices coloured in yellow, green and brown, and mother-of-pearl of different origins.The carved motif represents a wild animal with a body of fish rolled up around the butt.
'2-piece' Van Laere of variable weight: wenge, bubinga and synthetic materials.
Rounded 'Vignaux' style Van Laere: amboyna burl wood (rare), maple, coloured woods, mother-of-pearl and ivory inlays.
Old inlaid '4-point': different woods and a lot of dots made of white, red and black synthetic material. The points are very thin and separated.
Finally, here is an old and magnificently decorated '2-piece' cue. It goes back to the late 1800s and only a few copies of it must have been manufactured. Its splice is of the reverse (*) rounded 'Vignaux' style with five coloured veneers. The butt weighs 450 g and is adorned with a remarkable usual (**) and Boulle (***) marquetry, 2 long seams made up of about 290 wood veneers, 2 large green enamelled surfaces, 18 mother-of-pearl pieces and 34 fine gilt bronze motifs. The butt end has 2 bevelled triangles - one of them in mother-of-pearl and the other in ivory - that are opposite and bordered by 4 veneers. The shaft (110 g) is made of service wood and its ivory large ferrule (13.3-mm diameter) is assembled on an ebony cylinder.
The ivory triangle is shown below (third from the left) together with others made of wood, celluloid and mother-of-pearl, which were in vogue until about 1920.
A cue
of
the same type as the previous one is detailed in Section M
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(*)
i.e.rounded points directed towards the butt end instead of the joint
collar.
(**)
Coloured and exotic wood, mother-of-pearl and ivory inlays.
(***)
Other inlaid materials like gilt bronze in contours and tortoiseshell.
