Silver & Silver-plated items

An atypical visitor to a recent sale at Canterbury Auction Galleries (24% buyer’s premium) was a Norwegian silver gilt brudekrone dating from the late 18th or early 19th century.

Alongside pieces made in Kinsale, Galway and Waterford, silver from the small County Cork town of Youghal is among the scarcest of all Irish provincial silver. Only a handful of pieces survive that carry the punning town mark of a yawl.

Palace uses power of pre-emption to buy cast of Giambologna’s seminal sculpture at auction.

Sotheby’s (25% buyer’s premium) sale of art and antiques from the Regency manor house Spetchley Park in Wychavon, Worcestershire, held in London on December 11, included a range of ‘kunstkammer’ objects amassed by the Berkeley family in the 19th century.

This small Gothic Revival beaker was made by ecclesiastical metal manufacturer John Hardman (Birmingham, 1848) at the height of the first partnership with AWN Pugin.

This impressive and rare pair of silver table candlesticks with cluster columns, square bases and drip cups had no visible hallmarks but is probably Dutch and late 17th century in date.

The typical Georgian silver coffee pot is one of the great bargains of 21st century antiques collecting.

Victorian silver novelties do not come much better than this claret jug, formed as a 9in (23cm) tall kneeling elephant by James Barclay Hennell, London 1881. The hinged head (currently lacking tusks) forms the cover.

The first event of the year for Galloway Antiques Fairs is its local event in Harrogate.

Matthew Barton (25% buyer’s premium) attracted international interest in this early-19th century German gold snuff box at his November 20 London sale.

In 1906, three years after he had founded the Wiener Werkstätte with Koloman Moser, the multi-talented Austrian Josef Hoffmann designed a silver casket.

The 11 pieces of early-18th century Régence silver gilt from a dressing service pictured below were billed by Christie’s as “the last remnants of France’s most glorified stylistic and historically important period”.

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

This rare piece of Cork silver of Irish Republican interest sold for £4000 (plus 23% premium) at Sworders latest sale.

Exuding the exuberant confidence of pre-1914 Britain, this 21in (52cm) long silver table centrepiece, below, was a natural target for the London trade at the Anthemion (17.5% buyer’s premium) November 20 sale in Cardiff.

A pair of George III covered serving dishes made in London 1819 by Philip Rundell sold from the stand of Mary Cooke Antiques during the latest edition of the Winter Art & Antiques Fair in Olympia.

Differing echoes of the First World War attracted bidders at Dominic Winter’s (20% buyer’s premium) Cirencester auction in the run-up to Remembrance Sunday.

An impressive piece of neoclassical silver gilt with an impressive provenance, this George III trophy was consigned to Gerrards (18% buyer’s premium) by a vendor whose great-grandmother had apparently been given it ‘by royalty’.

In the first decades of the 19th century, watchmakers in many parts of Europe made a living by producing highly ornate watches and gold boxes, many of them for Chinese buyers.