Clocks, Watches & Jewellery

Despite countless offers to leave France, Suzanne Belperron (1900-83) remained in German-occupied Paris throughout the Second World War – a jewellery maker and a Resistance fighter.

Was this the ring of the Tiger of Mysore, taken from his body when he was killed in battle?

After seven years together, Ben Wright and Jonathan Carter of Gloucestershire-based Carter Wright Fine & Interesting Clocks have decided to go their separate ways after an amicable split.

The run on pearls continues with two spectacular prices paid for exceptional natural saltwater gems at auctions on either side of the Atlantic this week.

Sotheby’s have had to buy back the 59.60 carat flawless fancy vivid pink diamond they sold in Geneva last November for a world record $83m.

All five of John Harrison’s famous timekeepers will be on display in a new exhibition at the National Maritime Museum this summer.

Salisbury Museum is hoping to host a remarkable hoard of Bronze Age jewellery in a new gallery set to open this summer.

This Charles II eight-day longcase clock by Joseph Knibb – a ‘snapshot’ of early longcase clock development – doubled its estimate to sell for £240,000 at Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions sale in Donnington Priory.

A young clock conservator, Jonathon Kelly, is being given an opportunity to work on a rare 18th century musical and mechanical clock made by George Pyke.

This Art Deco 18ct gold Egyptian Revival gem-set winged scarab brooch with rose-cut diamonds will appear in the Antique & Modern Jewellery sale being held by Fellows of Birmingham.

Optimism permeated the UK’s regional auction market across much of the last year.

The annual Christmas Present sale held by George Kidner at their saleroom in Lymington included this French Art Deco ruby and diamond-set brooch or jabot pin.

A Victorian diamond rivière necklace sold to an anonymous bidder for £190,000 at Duke’s of Dorchester earlier this month.

This cased Austro-Hungarian gold and enamel brooch/pendant with a diamond-set monogram and coronet was the gift of Archduke Franz Ferdinand to Mary Marshall, the head housekeeper at Welbeck Abbey, country residence of the Dukes of Portland, from the 1890s until her retirement in 1923.

When, in 1854, William Holman Hunt decided to leave England to further his religious painting in Syria, John Everett Millais was distraught at the prospect of losing the only friend he entirely trusted.

Gents of Leicester, the first company to market electric bells in the UK, began to produce the electric clock system, known eventually as the Pulsynetic in the first decade of the 20th century.

The Jane Austen’s House Museum at Chawton in Hampshire has raised the £150,000 needed to keep a gold turquoise ring once owned by Jane Austen in the country.

The latest horology sale held by Dreweatts in Donnington Priory was led by this early Victorian brass tripod table clock signed twice for Thomas Cole of London.

An appeal to keep in the UK a ring once owned by Jane Austen received an anonymous £100,000 donation just days after it was launched.

The British government has placed a temporary export bar on a rare piece of jewellery that belonged to Jane Austen.