We have a few other Stubai ice pitons in the collection but these two are a bit special since they have the Robert Lawrie stamp on them. Robert Lawrie(1903-1982) was a man of many parts; a trained boot and shoe maker, alpiniste, racing driver and mountain equipment supplier. For most of his life he ran a shop in various London locations making and supplying boots and shoes to the mountaineering world, including expeditions to Mount Everest and the Antarctic. He also provided a range of equipment for mountaineers, notably ice axes, though for these items he was the retailer rather than the maker. We have an excellent, early example of this here in the collection with two ice pitons made by Stubai of Austria and retailed by Lawrie with his stamp. Dating from around 1950s, ice pitons were the earliest form of protection for ice climbers though bashing them in and hacking them back out again was difficult and tiring. The first, somewhat crude ice screws appeared in the 1960s consigning ice pitons to the history books and collections like ours.