Pub Talk - “Provenance”

Big Red here at me favorite waterin hole, Cohan's Pub.

Pull up a chair, have a pint....

In our discussion on context, we determined that the M-1 helmet is a collectible relic on the road to becoming an antique that, depending on circumstance, may have aspects of an artifact or stolen property. Provenance encompasses a multitude of aspects that often align with the applicable definition of context. So, is provenance proof or just a story?

A suitable working definition for provenance is the place of origin or earliest known history of something, something's origin, or a record of ownership used to demonstrate authenticity or quality. Some of these definitions apply more to archaeology, while others are a better description of how the art world tracks and documents ownership. The militaria collector further complicates this by using provenance as a means of authentication, which is more akin to connoisseurship. This involves comparing known examples, techniques, attributes, or documents to demonstrate that a helmet and its assembly are appropriate for a specific time period.

Because militaria collectors, for the most part, have proven to be notoriously inept at any form of historical record keeping outside oral storytelling, connoisseurship has unwittingly been used to fill in the gaps left in the historical provenance of helmets in the quest to authenticate them. Since militaria collectors are not archaeologists or art curators, it is difficult to blame them for not maintaining documentation on ownership or context. While some militaria collectors, like antiquarians, study and understand history through the objects they collect, most militaria collectors are simply collectors.

Because militaria-collecting relates more to the world of antiques than it does to art or archaeology, the technical definition of provenance becomes vague and tends to pull a little from each discipline for a consensus definition. For collectors of the M-1 helmet, provenance can be better understood and managed by dividing it into three categories: manufacture, discovery, and ownership.

Provenance of manufacture is relatively straightforward. The reason for this is that, for quality control purposes, manufacturers of the M-1 helmet were required to record the steel-making process in each helmet body by pressing a fine-line alphanumeric stamp into the underside of each helmet.

McCord Radiator & Manufacturing Company was the first and primary fabricator of the M-1 helmet of WWII. The lot and lift numbers pressed into the brim of their helmet bodies easily identify them.

In recent years, some collectors have been obsessive in their use of helmet lot numbers, attempting to pinpoint the exact month, week, and day of helmet body manufacture. These arguments are primarily emotional and rely solely on circumstantial observation-based data. While they may assist a collector in justifying their collection of identical helmets to their spouse, they hold less significance among experienced collectors.

At the current level of factual understanding of helmet lot numbers, experienced collectors can ascertain several contextual aspects about a helmet body. One of these aspects is the ability to definitively establish the provenance of manufacture through the identification of the specific company that fabricated the helmet body. This is possible because subsequent fabricators were required to add the first letter of their company name to the lot and lift numbers, making them unique to each fabricator. 

For example, a helmet body with the letter "S" in conjunction with the lot and lift number is attributable to Schlueter Manufacturing Company of St. Louis, Missouri, and because production documentation shows that Schlueter only pressed helmets during the war, helmets marked in this way clearly have the provenance of manufacture or the "origin" of a WWII Schlueter helmet. A collector can then apply connoisseurship by looking at the helmet's attributes, like profile, chin straps, loops, buckles, rim, and so forth, to first authenticate and more precisely place the helmet in the time frame of early, mid, late, or possibly post-war use.

Collector's Note: Although additional identification was not necessary for McCord's WWII contracts, their postwar contracted helmets included a letter "M" which preceded the lot and lift number.

Unless a helmet is found during an archaeological dig on a battlefield, provenance of discovery becomes an undocumented story of recollections handed down orally from seller to collector. Unfortunately, provenance of ownership is not much better than discovery because, aside from the novelty that veteran-acquired helmets can be considered stolen property, collectors have always been more interested in authentication as opposed to keeping a documented record with a helmet when it changes hands.

* See blog: Pub Talk - "context"

In fact, only when collectors are dealing with helmets that have customizations such as the addition of names, numbers, or art does obtaining documentation of ownership seem to be relevant. 

A more recent trend, the pursuit of "named" helmets, has developed and grown as more service records become digitized and online available. An exact match between a name or number on a helmet marking and a record in the National Archives only shows one possible level of previous ownership, and even though it does not cover the gap between when it left the ownership of the named individual and that of the current owner, most collectors seem content with this level of proof.

In the end, provenance amongst M-1 helmet collectors is not a unified definition; rather, it varies based on individual collecting focus. For some, a M-1 helmet of WWII manufacture is all the provenance they need. Collectors who focus on a specific event of the war will pursue provenance to provide context for a helmet having been there and done that. Collectors relish spinning the tale of the hunt, detailing the how, where, and when they found a helmet, but these tales of discovery, much like the trails of ownership, are rarely documented, and undocumented provenance is only a story.