Oscar Eckenstein is credited with inventing the first crampons specifically for climbing and mountaineering in 1910, along with Italian blacksmith, Henry Grivel. Mountain folk had been wearing ‘spiky things’ on their feet for centuries before that and there is some evidence that Hannibal put spikes on his elephants’ feet when crossing the Alps in 218 BC. The Austrian firm of Stubai goes back a long way to 1897, when Stubai Tooling Company was formed from an amalgam of local blacksmiths in the town of Fulpnes in the Austrian Tyrol. They started making crampons pretty much from the outset and the pair we have here in the collection are early versions dating from around 1910. Unfortunately, we don’t have a record of the donator, but thanks in absentia.