Clocks, Watches & Jewellery

As the vast majority of Georgian clockmakers signed their work, most regional brass-dial longcase clocks have a great sense of place.

These two mahogany library mantel timepieces – for sale at Dreweatts of Donnington Priory in the autumn – were supplied to HM Government by Benjamin Lewis Vulliamy in the early days of Victoria’s reign.

The complex precision electromechanical pendulum clocks made by William Hamilton-Shortt, engineer for the London & South Western Railway, and Frank Hope Jones, horologist of the Synchronome Company, were the most accurate pendulum clocks ever commercially produced.

Kensington Church Street clock dealer Howard Walwyn will offer this previously unknown Thomas Tompion walnut and mulberry longcase at the Masterpiece fair in London.

Bonhams will offer the most valuable English Golden Age clock ever to appear at auction as part of next month’s sale of the Clive collection.

In the Late Middle Ages the chaplet, made in many materials from boxwood to precious metals, was a commonplace aid to keep count of the repetition of prayers or the chapters read in a Book of Hours.

The Watch Sale at Fellows in Birmingham on June 18 includes arare Rolex Oyster Cosmograph Daytona chronograph with ‘reverse panda’ white on black dial.

Police appeal after jewellery and cash worth £830,000 stolen in night heist

For antiquities aficionados, the pinnacle of Christie’s ‘Classic Week’ in New York was its single-owner offering of 40 exquisitely carved intaglios and cameos hailing from the ancient world.

MADAM – I was interested to see the reference to the Canning Jewel (News, ATG No 2390).

With ‘on the premises’ country house contents sales now so rare, the more usual practice is for the better pieces to be removed to saleroom bases.

This gold ring mounted with an oval intaglio of the Roman god Mars made a multi-estimate £9000 at a sale of jewellery at Salisbury saleroom Woolley & Wallis (25% buyer’s premium).

A Renaissance revival jewel perhaps from the same workshop as the famous Canning Jewel has sold at auction in Salisbury.

The chain of artistic influences that led to the decoration of a gold-enamel watch made by John Kenable of Frith Street in London in c.1800 can be traced back to 1766.

At the turn of the 20th century, work by Italian émigré Andrew Grima (1921-2007) or the London jeweller Kutchinsky was on the periphery of the collecting world – still languishing in the bottom of jewellery boxes or, worse, the melting pot.