by Sprake:
by Godden:
This fine silk shows the racehorse Iroquois in full stride, with Fred Archer up. This horse, owned by P. Lorillard, won the Derby in 1881 - information which is printed on the normal card-mount (see st352).
Some examples have advertisement material relating to the Iroquois brand of tobacco, and silks complete with this are of extreme rarity (see above).
Other comments:
Godden identified that an advertisement for cigarettes included a silk made by Stevens. In 1978, the then members of the Stevengraph Collectors Association received the photograph below. They were all told it was by Stevens, and this has been common wisdom ever since.
However, with the availability of the silk above, there is now some doubt as to whether the silk below is of Stevens manufacture. It could be that it is a product of some other weaver.
There is below a detail comparison of the two silks, and there are many differences. There would seem to be little reason for Stevens to have redesigned this silk to this extent, and it is quite possible that these are from two different weavers. Perhaps insteady the cigarette company changed their suppliers of the silks, and it is for this reason that a new design was created.
In very detailed comparison we have:-
- The image above is identical to that of Godden's 34b [st356 on this site], except of course for the addition of the writing along the base line.
- In the image below, the horses front legs are set at a different angle.
- In the image below, the horses head is held higher than the genuine Stevens, (and is also higher than the Stevens design with the back rail [st352 on this site.].
- The angle at which the jockey is sat is different, as too is the position of the saddle cloth.
- The design of the tail is different.
- The hooves of the rear legs are different.
- The left hand side rear leg is leading on the genuine Stevens silk, whilst on the image below, this leading rear leg is the right hand side one.
- Most importantly, on the genuine Stevens above, the horse's hooves are positioned on the grass. In the image below, the horse's hooves are clearly above the grass.
- Finally, the horse below is shorter, in comparison to the writing, than the genuine Stevens above.
