Features

Spink (20% buyer’s premium) offered the only Victoria Cross group to appear at auction in 2019.

The opening lot of the Five Centuries sale at Lyon & Turnbull (25% buyer’s premium) in Edinburgh on February 5 was this previously unrecorded maiolica handled and spouted wet drug jar.

This silver half crown proof from 1839 sold for £6000 at London Coin Auctions (20% buyer’s premium).

A sizeable helping of English and Continental ceramics featured in the large auction titled Mario Buatta: Prince of Interiors held by Sotheby’s New York (25/20/13.9% buyer’s premium).

One of the highest prices of 2019 achieved by French auction house Beaussant Lefèvre (27% buyer’s premium inc VAT) was the €310,000 (£262,710) paid for this impressively tall 4ft 1in (1.25m) high pair of gilt bronze mounted, footed and covered vases.

This silver denarius from 43BC is struck to one side with a youthful male of Quintus Arrius, who was praetor in 72BC and propraetor in 71BC.

Caughley Porcelain was founded in Shropshire (at Broseley) so it is hardly surprising that local saleroom Halls has been offering its fair share of consignments from this 18th century factory whose wares rivalled those of the Staffordshire potteries and Worcester in particular.

This ‘superb’ rose ryal, produced during the third coinage of James I in 1619-20, sold for £34,000 at Baldwin’s of St James (20% buyer’s premium).

Found in a newly ploughed field close to a Roman road near Dover early in 2019, this gold aureus is one of just 24 recognised from the brief reign of Allectus (293-296AD).

On March 2 in Thurcroft, Rotherham, Paul Beighton will offer the second instalment of the Rowley collection of Rockingham pottery and porcelain produced locally in nearby Swinton in the first half of the 19th century. The collection was some 20 years in the making and comprised just over 120 pieces in total.

If the story of the sinking of the Bismarck in 1941 is well known, the fate of sister ship the Tirpitz is less familiar.

Among the ceramics to be included in the Thomaston Place Winter Auction to be held in Maine from February 28-March 1, is this 2½in (6.25cm) high English George III period earthenware mug.

This rare Umayyad gold dinar dated 105AH (723AD) equalled the auction record for an Islamic coin (or any coin sold in Europe) when it was hammered down at £3.1m at Morton & Eden (20% buyer’s premium).

A key feature of the ceramics section of Dreweatts’ sale on February 19 will be 55 lots from a local private collection featuring 18th century English porcelain.

This bronze Albert Medal, awarded to Lieutenant John Edward Gibbons (1905-71) for saving life at sea, sold for £8000 (plus 20% buyer’s premium) at Bonhams Knightsbridge.

A good range of 18th and 19th century English ceramics is included in Skinner’s February 14 sale of European furniture and decorative arts in Boston.

Chiswick Auctions will offer a single-owner collection of memorabilia relating to the second generation English Romantic poet, George Gordon Byron (1788-1824).

John Benjamin reviews the sale of an exceptional collection of desk clocks and Cartier jewels at Bonhams.

According to a popular story, alexandrite, one of the three main varieties of chrysoberyl, was discovered in the Urals by the Finnish mineralogist Nils Gustaf Nordenskiöld (1792-1866) and named in honour of the future Tsar Alexander II of Russia.

This pair of silver and enamel cufflinks with the royal cypher of George VI comes in a presentation box by Plante of Bury Street, London.