LONDON.- John Woodman Higgins (1874 – 1961) was an American industrialist who made his fortune from the Worcester Pressed Steel Company, Massachusetts, founded in 1905.

From 1927, Higgins decided to collect antique arms and armour seriously with a view to filling the museum he was building dedicated to uses of steel throughout the centuries. Correspondence of that year to French dealer Louis Bachereau, notes: ‘I am compiling a considerable collection of antique armor and arms, also including statues, portraits, tapestries and stained glass showing men on horses in armour, flags, pennants, chain mail coats, shields, pole arms, etc.’ From thence he grew a collection of over 5000 pieces of armour, arms and related objects. In 1931 the Higgins Armory Museum, a novel steel and glass building, pictured above, was opened to the public in Worcester, Massachusetts, housing his extensive collection.

The American Armour Craze. The first half of the 20th century saw a time when romantic tales of chivalry and courtly love captured the imagination of American collectors like John Woodman Higgins, others included newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, telegraph mogul Clarence Mackay and the cigarette maker Rutherfurd Stuyvesant. Their main artistic interests were in the Gothic Revival, ancestral castles and medieval works of art including armour. The collecting of arms and armour became highly competitive; European collections were broken up and handled by the eminent dealers of the day such as Jacques Seligmann and Joseph Duveen. In addition, there were the great influences of scholars like Bashford Dean who became the first curator of arms and armour at the Metropolitan museum in New York.

Over time the Higgins Armory collection was refined and with the benefit of modern scholarship and museology the decision has been taken to further refine the collection and integrate the core collection into the Worcester Art Museum. The deaccession process has occurred in two main phases; the first phase culminated in a 100% sold auction in 2013 by Thomas Del Mar Ltd (in association with Sotheby’s). This final single owner sale from the Higgins collection will be held by the same auction house on 7th May 2014.

The sale of over 300 lots will offer European and Japanese full armours, helmets, and individual elements of armour such as breastplates and gauntlets. There also will also be edged weapons and firearms, pictures, stained glass, sculpture and antiquities. As with the first sale this will provide a unique opportunity to acquire armour that in almost every case has a pedigree back to its sale to Higgins in the second quarter of the 20th century. Highlights include a boy’s armour bought by Higgins from the William Randolph Hearst collection, a German fluted full armour in the so-called Maximillian fashion, an etched Italian full armour, and a very rare half armour for a polish winged hussar.