This cue is another one of my favourites. It is a George Wright & Co Round Badge.
This beautiful cue has an ash shaft on a double-spliced ebony and tulip wood butt. It has an ebony front splice, edged with a butt maple veneer. The small round maker's badge is ivory.
The silver presentation plaque reads "Fred Hadden, Newera Eliya 1908, Best Break 57". Fred Hadden was a Scotsman. Newera Eliya is a province of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).
Fred Hadden went to Sri Lanka in 1869. There he established the Bogawantalawa Estate, a tea plantation in the central Sri Lankan highlands (see the article "World of Tea 2005" by David Decandia in Fresh Cup magazine, October 2004).
The cue was manufactured by George Wright & Co circa 1908, when Fred Hadden must have been 60 or 70. It's nice to think that old Fred was still knocking 57 breaks at that time.
