Folding Cavalry Top Boot Rack

A mahogany folding Cavalry Top Boot Rack with five inch long pegs set in pairs to hold up turned boots. The rack has a long gilt brass hinge to each end so that it can fold for travel. When the bottom support bar is folded to a 90 degree angle it also offers some protection to the hanging pegs when packed. The rack has two holes cut into the top rail with brass ring plates fixed to their front edge with which to hang it.

There is no maker's label or mark to this rack but it is comparable to Platt's MacDonald Patent Boot Rack which has a serrated brass strip to hang boots by their heels. The Army & Navy CSL advertised the rack at two price levels and illustrated it next to the Platt rack in their catalogues. This rack will take three pairs of boots but the seventh peg is an anomaly. Your first thought is that the rack has been reduced in size, perhaps when one peg was damaged. However, is this was the case, you would expect the hanging holes and the rubber and turned wooden rings to the back of the rack to be off centre. It cannot be that both sides were reduced in length because then you would either have no spare peg to the one side or one at each end.

The Cavalry Top Boot Rack is a very practical piece of equipment for neatly organising your boots but it's probable that it didn't take off when first made. This is the first example we have seen and if it was produced in large numbers we would expect to have had more of them. Circa 1900.

Size for use is given.