I’ve had this in my collection for many years but I have no idea what it did.
It is an model of a French 75 shell about 9” tall, made of thin aluminium and decorated with laurels and a miniature Croix De Guerre, a 75 gun motif with the dates 1914 to 1916 and a glass tube protruding 1½” from the nose. I understand it is a French commercially produced souvenir, the word DEPOSE (Registered design) is stamped on the base, for the annual ‘Celebration of the 75’, to raise funds in France during WW1.
My puzzle is that it seems to have had a function, it comes apart at the drive band and inside is a short cardboard tube glued into the base and the glass tube in the nose, which is splayed open inside the ‘shell’. It is obviously decorative or more likely novelty, but the aluminium is very thin so I doubt it would stand up to much opening and closing, such as if it had sweets or the like inside, and the glass tube suggests there was something to see inside it, but what?
Has anyone any idea what was inside it or what its function might have been?
Thanks
It is an model of a French 75 shell about 9” tall, made of thin aluminium and decorated with laurels and a miniature Croix De Guerre, a 75 gun motif with the dates 1914 to 1916 and a glass tube protruding 1½” from the nose. I understand it is a French commercially produced souvenir, the word DEPOSE (Registered design) is stamped on the base, for the annual ‘Celebration of the 75’, to raise funds in France during WW1.
My puzzle is that it seems to have had a function, it comes apart at the drive band and inside is a short cardboard tube glued into the base and the glass tube in the nose, which is splayed open inside the ‘shell’. It is obviously decorative or more likely novelty, but the aluminium is very thin so I doubt it would stand up to much opening and closing, such as if it had sweets or the like inside, and the glass tube suggests there was something to see inside it, but what?
Has anyone any idea what was inside it or what its function might have been?
Thanks
