Clocks, Watches & Jewellery

The Palm Beach Show Group have announced the launch of a new fair in Miami Beach.

A rotting old caravan propped up on a farm might not sound like the kind of place you’d expect to discover a valuable family heirloom. But for a Devon-based furniture restorer, it proved just that when they found an Art Deco brooch believed to be a rare piece hiding within the contents of the van.

A medieval ring long associated with Joan of Arc sold for £240,000 – almost 30 times its estimate – at Timeline Auctions in Bloomsbury on February 25.

Sotheby’s London will be showing hundreds of previously unseen jewellery drawings in a one-off exhibition from February 18-March 8, sourced from a privately owned collection of jewellery and silver.

The market for traditional antiques ended 2015 on a high with a series of spectacular individual prices posted in London and New York in mid-December.

One of the most ambitious dealer selling exhibitions of recent memory – the Tom Scott collection of clocks at Carter Marsh – has concluded with market-defining sales for the Winchester dealership.

This gold and peacock blue enamel necklace designed by Archibald Knox sold for £31,000 at Mallams in Oxford.

A 1940s Rolex wristwatch whose RAF owner was murdered by the SS after the Great Escape has sold for £165,000 in Buckinghamshire.

Dr John C Taylor, the horologist, inventor and clockmaker, has been given the Harrison Medal by the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers for his services to horology.

Police are appealing for help from the antiques trade to trace two men captured on CCTV at the scene of a watches burglary in London.

Berlin online auction house Auctionata set a house record when this Chinese enamel, ivory-mounted and paste-set musical and automaton clock was sold for €2.8m (£2.15m), or €3.37m including premium.

The law on tiger jewellery is frequently flouted. Last week on eBay – a site that operates a ban on antique ivory – several items of big cat jewellery were on sale from UK vendors.

Two lantern clocks engraved with the signature ‘Thomas Loomes at ye mermayd in Lothbury’ recently appeared at auction within days of each other.

What is billed as “the best collection of English clocks that has come to the market in living memory” will go on sale later this year at Winchester dealers Carter Marsh.

COMMENT – Dealer Jamie Sinai believes modern functionality will eventually lead to a celebration of creativity and individual flair

A significant reward is being offered for the recovery of 125 watches stolen from an antiques store in north London.

After lengthy and complex negotiations, the paper archive of the Staffordshire pottery firm of Minton’s has been saved for the nation.

The Art Loss Register has launched a database dedicated to stolen watches, one they say can help anyone buying, selling or providing loans against second-hand wristwatches.

Sotheby’s Geneva managed to grab the headlines when the Henry Graves Supercomplication set a record for a timepiece at auction.

Collector Robin Pinchbeck had never bought a clock before, but when he set his sights on the George I walnut-cased astronomical longcase on offer at Mitchells (17.5% buyer’s premium) of Cockermouth on September 11-12 he knew he simply had to have it.