The 4½in (11cm) tennis player’s skirt lifter c.1870s sold for £3200 at Graham Budd.
The example featured as Pick of the Week (ATG No 2345) is so very early, as the 1860s seems to be the advent for long, expensive dresses, when skirt lifters were needed for bicycling, badminton and tennis. The heyday for patents was the 1870s, with makers Henry Manning Knight and Alexander Leslie Fyfe being very much to the fore.
The ‘scissor type’ gave the Victorians endless opportunities in subject matter to manufacture ‘sliders’ that however intricate, the tool-maker was up for the challenge.
I shall be buying the Carole Walker book you referenced, A History and Guide to Collecting Ladies’ Antique Skirt Lifters (2016), as other publications on the subject leave a lot to be desired.
Michael Robinson
Address withheld
