Features

A demi-parure of mid-18th century Swedish gold jewellery offered by Brightwells (22% buyer’s premium) in Leominster was accompanied by a painted portrait miniature of the original owner wearing the set. The miniature, although uninscribed, was dated 1845.

Far more fluent in the language of jewellery and stones, the Georgians and Victorians would have immediately made the link between snakes and eternal love. The ouroboros – a serpent swallowing its own tail – was commonly understood as a symbol of eternity.

Ahead of its season-opening September 18 jewellery sale, Chiswick Auctions invited Jessica Diamond, the suitably-named jewellery editor for 'Condé Nast Traveller', to pick her top 10 lots from the catalogue.

Forthcoming jewellery auction highlights at home and abroad – from the first ‘smart’ watch to the first female mayor in the British Empire.

A remarkable collection of early rings was offered by Hansons (20% buyer’s premium) in Etwall, Derbyshire, this summer.

The Left Bank area known as the Carré Rive Gauche is a group of streets in the 6th and 7th arrondissements between the Seine and the Boulevard Saint Germain – notably the rues du Bac, de Beaune, de Lille, du Pré-aux-Clercs, des Saints-Pères, de l’Université, de Verneuil and the quai Voltaire.

While many Paris galleries take part in fairs or parcours, there is no shortage of dealers who launch individual exhibitions in their galleries at the rentrée.

Specialist dealer in Oceanic art Anthony Meyer, whose gallery is in the rue des Beaux Arts on the Left Bank, is one of the Paris dealers who is doubly busy this September.

The gallery-lined medieval streets of the St-Germain-des-Prés area of Paris will be thronged with a babel of different accents and cultures during the second week of September.

Dealer events have traditionally dominated the early September calendar in Paris but auction houses are catching up.

The September return to work (and school) after a long summer break is significant enough in France to have its own title: La rentrée.

Fair aims to capitalise on the event’s past heritage and more recent major innovations.

Other exhibitions launching this September include 'Forces et Mouvements' at Galerie François Léage, a fifth-generation dealership on the well-known rue du faubourg Saint-Honoré.

There is a decidedly French flavour to the loan exhibition at this year’s Biennale. Prominently displayed under the central dome of the Grand Palais will be a selection of works from the extensive Napoleonic collection of Pierre-Jean Chalençon.

As well as the themed shows, some of which are detailed on these two pages, this year’s Parcours has a loan exhibition that goes to the roots of the French tribal art collecting.

An old and respected provenance can still hold sway even in no longer buoyant sectors of the market.

After 49 years of trading in Manhattan, ceramics and glass dealer Leo Kaplan Ltd closed its doors earlier this year.

The most desirable of all sealed bottles are those that are both named and dated. It is the possibility for geneaological research that fires many collectors.

A valuation day find for Kingham & Orme (20% buyer’s premium), this Dutch-engraved East India Company baluster goblet c.1760, took a multi-estimate £7500 in Evesham.

It was not only in London that Eastern daggers made a big impression in UK auctions this summer.