More Buttons.  Note 25.
Having not written for some time (years!), I recently looked through past blog Comments to see if there were any new to me.  In Note 17 (1 March 2009) I wrote about a set of racing buttons that had come up for sale at Bonhams.  There were seven George III Irish silver circular buttons, each with an engraving of a racehorse with its name.  The buttons were made in Dublin by (IW?) in 1787.  I then described the various series of contemporary engraving of racehorses after the artists Joseph Sympson, Tillemans, Wootton, the Sartoriuses, Spencer and Seymour and others, published between the 1730s and about 1800.  Such engravings, sometimes with a panoramic background of  Newmarket, Ascot or Epsom, were often used in creating the decoration of racing trophies, engraved or repoussee.  The horses on these buttons were Black Prince, O Burn, Peeping Tom, Snip. Tinker, Bum Brusher and Bishop.  From the Irish listings in the Racing Calendars of the period, I identified all of them apart from Black Prince and O Burn.  The other horses belonged to a Mr R.B. Daly, a Mr Kirwan or a Mr Savage.

I am greatly indebted to Thomas Sinsteden, the author of a Comment posted in September 2012, that I had overlooked.  He wrote:

'10 more buttons by the same maker, John Nicklin (predominantly a buckle maker) and the same year 1787 are held by the Metropolitan Museum in NY.  The names of the horses, all with different poses were engraved by the same hand as the Bonhams buttons are.  [The horses names are] Creeping Kate, Fanny, Louisa, Jenny Driver, Eve, Hyder Alley [Hyder Ally in the Calendar], Elumpy [Flumpy?], Trifler [Trifle], Merry Andrew and Jane Harold.  A pair of paintings of Creeping Kate and Peeping Tom were sold at Bonhams Edinburgh, 1 Nov 2010 lot 278.'

Mr Daly owned Fanny, Jenny Driver and Louisa; Mr Kirwan: Eve and HyderAlly; a Mr Hamilton: Trifle and Merry Andrew; and a Mr Eyre: Jane Harold.  All these gentlemen owned other horses and were obviously successful racing men in Ireland at the time.  I could not find the owner for Creeping Kate or Flumpy, and I have been unable to find any engravings that might have been the source for the design of these buttons.

At the end of Note 17, I asked two questions: what engravings were copied (if any) and who commissioned these buttons (and why)?    Good hunting!