A Caucasian Kindjal

Russian Silver Marks For 1862

Footnotes

Provenance
Acquired in Russia by Florence Farmborough (1887-1978) who first went there in 1908, at the age of 21, as a governess/companion to a family in Kiev. In 1910 she moved to Moscow to teach English to the daughters of a famous heart surgeon. On the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 she qualified as a Red Cross nurse with the Imperial Russian Army, and saw service at both the Galician and the Romanian Fronts. During this time she kept a diary and took pictures with a large plate camera which she would develop and print while encamped with the forces. She returned to England in 1918 and wrote a number of articles for The Times. Her edited diaries highlighting some of her remarkable pictures was published in 1974 as Nurse at the Russian Front. She subsequently published her collection of photographs in Russian Album 1908-1918 in 1979, and was elected a Fellow of the Geographical Society. For many years she worked as a university lecturer in Spain where she was in the thick of the Spanish Civil War including working as a newsreader on Spanish National Radio. She returned to England in time for the Battle of Britain during which time she worked for the Women's Voluntary Service. In 1974 she was the subject of a programme entitled 'English Nurse with the Tsar's Army, and in the BBC television documentary series Yesterday's Witness. She died in 1978 at the age of 91

An old handwritten label attached to the kindjal reads 'Cossack Dagger of Caucasian Silver. (used by Circassian Cossacks.)'