Features

Some early Chinese objects are included in the Timeline Auctions sale in Harwich, Essex on May 28.

The famous Australian soprano Dame Nellie Melba once owned this pair of ‘Dragon and Phoenix’ bottle vases which were sold at auction from her estate in 2015.

Included in a mixed-discipline sale held in Paris by Daguerre (28% buyer’s premium inc VAT) at Drouot was a Sèvres bough pot in soft paste porcelain.

Estimated at £300-500, a finely decorated Qing famille rose pen box and cover was knocked down for £33,000 at a recent sale at John Nicholson’s (25% buyer’s premium).

A Chinese ‘sleeper’ emerged in a Vintage and General Sale at Gardiner Houlgate (20% buyer’s premium), Corsham, near Bath on April 25 courtesy of a textbook ‘scholar’s’ object.

Duke’s Asian sale on May 20 includes this Wanli (1572-1620) mark and period wucai ‘zun’ altar vase.

Last November Roseberys in London sold a set of 16 paintings on silk by Kim Jun Keun, better known by his artistic name Kisan, for a surprise £40,000.

The 12th edition of the International Antiques Fair takes place in Hong Kong this month at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. It runs from May 24-28, coinciding with the main spring auction series held by Christie’s.

The highlight of a dedicated ceramics sale held at Drouot by Fraysse (22.17% buyer’s premium) was this large 16 x 22in (41 x 56cm) early French, Moustiers, faience basin made at the Clerissy factory.

Underpinned by bids from the internet, silver from beyond the British Isles is these days a stronger feature of provincial sales.

Satirical magazine Private Eye once ran a series highlighting the fatuity of interviews by supposedly asking famous names their feelings towards spoons, there being nothing more mundane or less worthy of comment. But the appeal of an antique spoon to the cognoscenti is not difficult to appreciate.

An Elkington electroplated duck press outsold silver proper at Halls (20% buyer’s premium) of Shrewsbury on March 20.

Two cased Stuart Devlin silver gilt surprise eggs of unique designs sold for £4400 at 1818 Auctions (20% buyer’s premium) in Milnthorpe on April 1.

On account of its relative scarcity, all Irish silver carries a premium. It is the pieces made in small provincial centres that are most highly prized.

Offered as a sale within a sale, 34 silver snuff boxes and vinaigrettes came fresh to market at Lawrences’ April 9 sale after decades in a private collection.

After almost 50 years on public display in the silver galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, a James I silver shell-form spice or sugar box was offered for sale at Salisbury saleroom Woolley & Wallis.

At the turn of the 20th century, work by Italian émigré Andrew Grima (1921-2007) or the London jeweller Kutchinsky was on the periphery of the collecting world – still languishing in the bottom of jewellery boxes or, worse, the melting pot.

It was on the battlefield of Balaclava on October 25, 1854 that the name of James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan (1797-1868) first became etched into public memory.

A Victorian hardstone and gold necklace and similar brooch sold for an unexpected £7500 (estimate £600-800) at Lawrences (25% buyer’s premium) of Crewkerne on April 11.

Seemingly, whatever fashion website or Instagram influencer you choose, the brooch is this season’s ‘on-trend’ accessory. One might argue that in the trade, demand for good period examples of this ‘forgotten’ or ‘old fashioned’ item of jewellery has never really gone away.