Antique English Art Nouveau Dual Snooker / Billiards Cue Stick & Walking Holder

Description

This is
an Exceptional
Antique English Art Nouveau Dual Snooker Cue Stick & Walking Stick Holder.
At the time of the original listing, we are in the process of listing a large number of antique and vintage items purchased in England.  These items are an eclectic mix including gold and sterling jewelry, and many unique, and in some cases, one of a kind items, in wood, brass, and iron, and other materials as well.
We also had four snooker / billiards / pool listings:
·
A full boxed set of vintage pool balls with accessories
·
A full boxed set of vintage snooker balls with rack
·
an antique English Art Nouveau dual snooker cue stick and walking stick holder
·
a Mixed Lot of Three Antique Vintage Pool / Snooker / Billiard Balls and a 4 Ball Keychain
·
a boxed set of three antique English miniature billiard balls
This truly is a beautiful object that combines a dual function with a wonderful, decorative form!  The rack has a unique dual use feature, where each opening has a swivel level that can individually convert each of the four slots to and from a billiards / snooker cue holder to a cane / walking stick holder.  The rack is designed to hold either four canes / walking sticks or eight snooker cues (but see information below regarding the number of cue sticks).
PLEASE NOTE:  The way the holder is made, to use it as a walking stick holder rather than a cue stick holder, it will work ONLY with walking sticks with a fairly large head; the rack will NOT hold canes or umbrellas with curved handles, walking sticks with a right angled handle, or swagger sticks or similar with a small diameter head. Please be sure to consider if this rack will suit your needs.
The body of the rack is cast iron with beautiful, deeply cast intaglio Art Nouveau floral designs.  The rack was thought by the seller to be of the Art Nouveau Period, late Victorian or Edwardian.  The swivels for the functional conversion, are fastened to the rack with rivets have decorative round heads.  The casting includes maker's information with intaglio lettering reading "HALL'S PATENT".
PLEASE NOTE:
For the walking stick configuration, the rack will only work for four sticks, each with a fairly large round head such as may be found with ornate sterling headed antique walking sticks, large enough so that the head cannot drop through the opening.  Walking sticks with too small round heads, swagger sticks, stick with straight handles, and canes with curved tops cannot be held securely.
For the cue stick configuration, each hole has two circular openings for a cue tip.  The holes for cue tips are just about 11 MM in diameter. Due to tolerances in the casting, two of the four swivels will snap lock into place for use with cue sticks, but the other two do not.  Consequently, the edge of the cast iron housing very slightly occludes the opening in the back / inner hole by about 1 MM or less.  I found the following information online regarding tip sizes:
"Most snooker players prefer a tip size between 9mm to 10mm with 9.5mm being the most popular. English pool players tend to use a smaller tip between 7mm to 9.5 mm mainly due to smaller lighter cue ball."
I learned from a separate site that due to the much large of size of American pool balls versus English Snooker balls, that American pool cue tips typically vary from 11.75 to 13 MM depending on your style of play.
I was not able find any definitive information about cue tips for playing billiards as opposed to pool and snooker.
Therefore, my assessment and recommendations for this very nice rack are:
American pool - Unless you use a smaller cue tip than noted above, and consistent with hole sizes documented above for this rack, you should only purchase the rack for purely decorative purposes.  Alternately, you could you the rack for pool cues in the cane configuration, since with only a 1/4" gap at the front in that configuration, the sticks cannot fall out, although they will likely not stand in as orderly manner as for properly stowed snooker cues.
Snooker / English pool - with the slight anomaly in two back hole openings documented above, you should be able to use the rack for a minimum of six cue sticks, and in most cases you will likely be able to fit two tips into each section for a total of eight.  However, even if that is the case, since the two holes are pretty close together, I am not sure what means with respect to the shafts of two cues standing side by side and whether they would be able to stand together in a uniform manner.  Any enlightenment on the intended configuration and use of the rack with respect to these issues from a knowledgeable snooker expert would be much appreciated!
Billiards - you will need to measure the tips of your cue sticks and make your own assessment of the suitability of the rack based on the measurements I provided above.
As can probably see from a closeup photo, when the cue stick feature is fully engaged, the inner hole is very slightly occluded by the rack housing by about 1/16" to 1/32" inch.  Since it clearly seems the rack was designed to hold 8 cue sticks rather than 4, it seems that there would be sufficient tolerance such that all eight snooker cue stick holes can be used.
This heavy, substantial cue stick rack weighs 22.5 ounces (just under 1 1/2 pounds).  As noted, the main housing is cast iron.  The swiveling cue holders are non-ferrous metal, rather than iron.  Since they are obviously very heavy substantial metal as well, so it seems to me that they must likely be either solid brass or bronze.  Due to the variation in the patina of these antique pieces, I cannot tell for certain which metal they might be.  Both the cast iron and the swivels have a beautiful, soft patina of age.
The overall maximum dimensions of the rack are 10 1/2" wide x 2 3/4" deep with a 8 1/2" height to the wall mount back plate which is integral to the casting.  The casting is 1" deep, partially open on the back as seen.  There is a pair of 1/4" diameter holes, on 4 1/4" centers. When we purchased the cue stick rack there were four black wood screws included, two of which would probably be appropriate for mounting the rack on a wooden surface.  The screws are possibly not original to the rack.  For mounting on dry wall, molly bolts, dry wall anchors, or other hardware appropriate for the weight of the rack should be used.  I always recommend consulting a hardware professional.
There is no lower holder for the cues' bumpers.  You could optionally fashion one if desired.
Condition
The rack is in excellent condition, with a pleasing, variable patina of age.  Please not the possible minor design anomaly with respect to the exposure of two hole openings documented above.
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