Decorative Art

One half of an extensive single-owner collection of novelty Victorian and Edwardian silver and glass animal objects went under the hammer at Reeman Dansie’s two-day sale in Colchester last week.

An unusual belt buckle by the Parisian jeweller and glass maker René Lalique which had been worn by the vendor throughout her nursing career has sold for £19,000 at a North Yorkshire auction.

An English provincial rarity, the 3½in (9cm) tall, c.1688 Norwich beaker below was a target for collectors at Henry Adams (20% buyer’s premium) of Chichester.

MADAM – I write this letter with three separate hats on but, in all three cases, addressed for the attention or our many auction houses.

Rare as Forres silver is, three pieces by the Highland town’s smiths John and Patrick Riach were on offer at Edinburgh auction house Thomson Roddick (17.5% buyer’s premium) on October 11 – the fiddle pattern dessert spoon, below, and two characteristic Scottish toddy labels.

This classical Guild of Handicrafts bowl, below, underlined the popularity of Arts & Crafts silver when offered by Essex auction house Stacey’s (20% buyer’s premium).

Catalogued as a ‘travelling ensemble’ these two oak fitted cases of silver tableware, below, conjure up images of lavish inter-war era picnics.

Despite its size and various eras of occupation, Malta sustained a vibrant silver and gold-working tradition across several centuries.

This pair of Commonwealth silver plates, London 1645, bear the contemporaneous arms of the Puritan Bulstrode Whitelocke (1605-75).

IACF is expecting a buoyant antique and collectors’ fair at Alexandra Palace on Sunday, December 2, including items sourced from shipwrecks.

This fine pair of Victorian silver six-branch candelabra sold to a United Arab Emirates bidder on thesaleroom.com for £13,000 at John Nicholson’s (24% buyer’s premium) in Haslemere, Surrey, on October 15.

Following the wake of the influential 1862 International Exhibition in London (when Japanese art first reached a wide British audience), this tea service below would have been the height of fashion when it was made by Richard Martin and Ebenezer Hall in 1879.

Of all the types of playful drinking cups or trinkspiel made by Dutch and German goldsmiths during the 16th and 17th centuries, the example offered by Sotheby’s in Paris last week was surely the most elaborate.

In 1921, the opening of the spring trade fair in Leipzig was accompanied by inauguration of the socalled Porzellan Palais.

A number of works designed by some of the biggest names in the Wiener Werkstatte association are to be offered in the Jugendstil auction at Dorotheum on December 12. Among them are two brooches designed by Josef Hoffmann.

Anteo Subastas in San Sebastian, Spain, is offering an example of a Mexican colonial silver devotional altarpiece in its next auction on November 28.