Clocks, Watches & Jewellery

ANTIQUE and secondhand jewellery valued at £430,000 has been stolen during a break-in at an auction house in south Glasgow following what appears to have been a carefully planned and meticulously timed raid.

In clock collecting, the gold standard of original condition can be a difficult one to meet. Clocks almost always needing repairs or replacement parts to keep functioning day in, day out for centuries.

AS sales go, it is hard to imagine one that could have been more of an auctioneer’s dream than the collection of Elizabeth Taylor’s jewellery and personal possessions.

THIS Holtzapffel & Deyerlein ornamental turning lathe made in London c.1827 came up for sale at Skinner in Marlborough, Massachusetts in a Science, Technology and Clocks sale.

THE discovery of a new clock by a Golden Age maker is bound to generate excitement in horological circles, but the £600,000 plus premium paid at Bonhams last week for the ebony table clock pictured here illustrates just how much the rarest and freshest examples can command.

THE highlight of the two-day sale conducted by Rosebery's of West Norwood, London on March 15-16 was this unsigned lantern clock, left, consigned 'in the rough' by a private vendor.

THIS locket, believed to contain the hair of Admiral Lord Nelson to one side and Lady Emma Hamilton to the reverse, was previously unknown to Nelson experts but it turned up at Woolley & Wallis of Salisbury after being consigned by a vendor in Australia who has family connections to Portsmouth.

THE U.S. Supreme Court in Washington has delivered a significant blow to Tiffany & Co’s bid to stop the sale of counterfeit jewellery on eBay.

SOTHEBY’S set a new auction record for a jewel in Geneva when a 24.78-carat fancy intense pink diamond sold to London jeweller Laurence Graff at SFr40.5m (£25.6m) plus premium.

A MONTH after the murder of Barry George Rubery, Avon and Somerset Police have released details of property missing from his home.

THIS brass inlaid mahogany bracket clock with a white enamel dial signed Drury, Cheshunt, was one of a number of antiques stolen during a break-in at Antiques at the Corn Exchange, Tunbridge Wells.

THIS previously unrecorded George II mahogany ‘sign post’ angle barometer was made by the gifted mechanician and scientist John Whitehurst (1713-1788) of Derby.

TIFFANY have lost on most counts in their appeal against a ruling in a US federal district court backing eBay over the sale of the firm’s jewellery.

THIS rare Charles II clock by John Knibb of Oxford, c.1685, was recently found by the vendor when sorting through effects inherited from a family member around 50 years ago.

The demand for golden age English clocks has been on something of a high for several years now and shows little sign of abating.

A THOMAS Tompion table clock was among the items stolen in a raid on a Cumbrian stately home on Saturday, September 19.

A NEW crop of fake carriage clocks, believed to be made in China, has appeared on eBay.

JOHAN Ten Hoeve, a professional development diploma student on West Dean College’s clocks programme in West Sussex, has made a replica of a Thomas Tompion clock for the Royal Observatory Greenwich.

THE important 17th century ivory barometer stolen from the Fairfax House Museum in York has been recovered and is back on display in the museum.

Positive news from Dreweatts' clocks sale at Donnington Priory, Newbury on February 10 which posted a 92 per cent selling rate.