Clocks, Watches & Jewellery

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.

As single disciplines go, English clocks are among the London summer fairs’ strongest suits.

While there were plenty of high-end clocks on offer in the London auction rooms and fairs over the summer season, Bonhams were the only house to offer dedicated clock sales.

The sale of Fine Clocks, Barometers and Scientific Instruments conducted by Dreweatts at Donnington Priory on September 4 will include this well-documented William and Mary brass lantern clock by Thomas Veale of Chew Magna.

At Dreweatts’ first stand-alone sale of jewellery in London this version of Salvador Dalí’s ‘The Eye Of Time’ (El Ojo Del Tempo) brooch sold for £75,000.

This remarkable 1773 longcase clock by Hugh Lough of Penrith proved the top-selling lot at Mitchells of Cockermouth when it sold at £19,000.

It has to go down as one of the great car boot fair finds of all time. On June 26, Christie’s South Kensington will offer for sale this Breitling Top Time wristwatch, worn by Sean Connery in ‘Thunderball’.

Pearls and coloured stones remain strong – but, fuelled by interest from China (and, to a lesser, extent, the Middle East), so does amber.

A single pearl-drop earring worn by Charles I at his execution in 1649, a maharaja’s coat richly embroidered with pearls c.1870, and a necklace of cultured pearls given to Marilyn Monroe by Joe DiMaggio in 1954 – all part of an exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum this autumn.

Fellows’ latest quarterly Vintage & Modern Wristwatch auction included a rare 1940s Rolex Oyster, the so-called ‘monobloc’ chronograph.

One hestitates to contradict the great metaphysical poetic and theologian John Donne who believed that ‘death comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes’.

Salisbury auctioneers Woolley & Wallis include this George III mahogany striking bracket clock by Robert Henderson, London in their sale on March 26.

Edward Prior specialised in producing watches for the Ottoman market and an example in exceptional condition recently appeared at a sale held at the Canterbury Auction Galleries.

It was not the oak case that made this George III eight-day longcase clock such an attractive lot at Batemans of Stamford – it was the movement and face which bore the magic name of Thomas Ogden of Halifax.