Winston Churchill, a cigarette case once owned by him, 1907

[CHURCHILL, SIR WINSTON]

Silver cigarette case

oblong (83 x 75mm), engine-turned with gold hinge thumb-piece and applied initials "JC" in monogram, produced for Alfred Clark of New Bond Street, 1907, PRESENTED BY CHURCHILL TO HIS DRIVER DURING HIS VISIT TO ALBERTA, CANADA, IN 1929

[with:] one vintage photograph and six modern prints of the car, driver, and local sights

"...I have been wonderfully received in Canada. Never in my whole life have I been welcomed with so much genuine interest & admiration as throughout this vast country..." (letter to Clementine Churchill, 27 August 1929)

Churchill spent several days in late August 1929 exploring the Rockies in Western Alberta in a Lincoln Touring Car provided by Burns & Co. Ltd (a major meat-packing firm), as part of his three-month North American tour alongside his son Randolph, his brother Jack and Jack's son Johnnie. Their driver, Clarence Embury, recalled the experience in later life, including such details as Churchill's procedure when painting the stunning landscape of Emerald Lake ("...he had his little bottle with him, and he would take a sip ... and then make a few more strokes - size the situation up - and this kept on going for about 3 hours. Then when he got all his sketches done, he didn’t detail them he just sketched them. And then by this time he had the bottle nearly empty, and a big long cigar. He’d take a couple puffs then a swig and a stroke. Another puff and a swig and a stroke...")

Churchill gifted this item to Embury when he rejoined his railway car at Lake Louise. The cigarette case was manufactured for a fashionable Mayfair silversmith more than twenty years earlier and the initials "JC" suggest that it was originally commissioned by another family member, probably either his brother Jack or his mother, Jennie (d.1921), during the period of her marriage to George Cornwallis-West (1900-1914).

PROVENANCE:

Gift to Clarence T. Embury, 1929; thence by descent to the present owner

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