Arms, Armour and Militaria Auction catalogue

Olympia Auctions is the UK’s leading specialist auction house in antique arms, armour, and militaria, headed by our founder Thomas Del Mar. We are the only auction house regularly holding Arms and Armour sales in London.

The catalogues from our sales contain everything from prehistoric flint axes to 19th-century firearms. Between their covers you will find 4,000 years of history with items ranging from Greek helmets and Samurai armour to Renaissance swords and Victorian firearms. You will also find armourer-related items, accessories and books.

Our catalogues are researched and compiled by a team of internationally renowned experts comprising Thomas Del Mar, who ran the Antique Arms and Armour department at Sotheby’s for many years, David Williams, formerly of Bonhams and Christie’s, Ian Eaves former Keeper of Armour at the Royal Armouries, Peter Smith and Charles Webb. Their combined knowledge and decades of experience in the market is reflected in each careful and detailed entry of every lot. Lengthy notes on makers, provenance and discussions are common and each lot is accompanied by one or more photographs.

The tradition of collecting arms and armour dates back to antiquity and flourished during the Renaissance and Victorian eras. It is still a rich and lively collecting field today and we are delighted that our catalogues are valued as reference works in their own right, long after a sale has past. We are proud to have offered a number of remarkable ancestral, institutional and private single owner collections.

The department is pleased to support scholarship by others in the field, publishing books such as Tobias Capwell’s Armour of the English Knight, Stefan Krause (ed.) Tournaments: 1000 years of Chivalry, and Louis Bremers’s The Pursuit of Honour, also available via our Publications page.

« BACK TO PUBLICATIONS