Sixteen of these 20 graduated "petal" bells were on the remnants of an old strap. The owner had collected the remaining four bells separately, but wanted to include them with the others on a new strap.
Most of the bells date to the late 1800s and early 1900s era, but four date to the early 1800s. One of these early bells is from the foundry of Seth North, one by Henry Stanley & Co, and two by Goff & Abel.
It was hard to know what this old strap originally looked like because the strap had a lot of damage and repairs. The one thing I knew for sure was the ends of the strap once had what I call a "double buckle, double billet" closure. (A billet is the strap with holes for the buckle to fasten onto.)
To use a sleigh bell strap with double-buckle, double-billet ends, you would fasten each billet onto its adjacent buckle to form a loop. One loop hooks over one "hame arm" of a horse's collar, the bell strap passes around the collar, and the other loop hooks over the second hame arm.
Click "See more images" to view larger images of this strap. Also see another example of a double-buckle, double-billet strap...
The owner wanted to roughly follow the general design of the old strap, but also wanted me to use my signature "laced" style for the new strap. I lengthened the new strap to make room for the four additional bells, but kept the spacing between bells as similar to the original as I could. And I also added the double-buckle, double-billet ends.
The new dark-brown strap is 65" long and 2" wide from one buckle center to the other. The buckles are 1 1/2" wide. Each of the billets is 15" long when laid flat.
This particular item is a custom, one-of-a-kind project made for a past client. Items in this Custom Projects section are for information only; they are not available for regular sale.
