Canterbury

Edward Prior specialised in producing watches for the Ottoman market and an example in exceptional condition recently appeared at a sale held at the Canterbury Auction Galleries.

A 76-lot single-owner collection of Imperial Chinese porcelain, jade and ivories from the Ming and Qing dynasties is to be offered at The Canterbury Auctions Galleries’ two-day sale on May 22-23 in Kent.

A KENT auction house has withdrawn a sacred Aboriginal artefact from sale after intervention from cultural experts and the Australian High Commission.

The majolica market may have cooled a little since the white hot days of the 1990s but rarities still have the capacity to command imposing sums at auction.

SOME areas of the art market seem impervious to the changing winds of taste. One is quality pictures of great European cities by recognised artists which appeal across the usual boundaries of generations and national borders.

THE Royal Museum & Art Gallery of Canterbury have acquired a van Dyck portrait of one of the city’s most famous sons from one of London’s leading Old Master picture dealers.

What a novel idea Kent dealer Neville Pundole has come up with for his current exhibition at the Neville Pundole Gallery, The Friary, Canterbury.

MOST numismatic material when offered at auction comes up in London. Sometimes this is not the case and then frequently a better-than-usual price is achieved.

UK: FROM October 1 – 31, to mark the 602nd anniversary of Chaucer’s death, the Gallery in the Friars, Canterbury, is holding an exhibition, entitled The Canterbury Tales.

CANTERBURY Auction Galleries are celebrating the relaunch of their rooms after a £300,000 modernisation programme. The Lord Mayor of Canterbury, Councillor Fred Whitemore, will re-open the rooms on October 4, revealing, among other changes, a grand new slate staircase and entrance lobby, with new reception area.

Furniture in country house is eclipsed by piece found in a drawer UK: PAPERWEIGHTS have not hit any sort of headlines in years and anyone outside the coterie of (mostly American) collectors may have assumed they had been relegated to the status of murder weapons in Thirties whodunits – but not so. One became the totally unexpected star of the contents of The Thorne, a country house at Bethsersden which were removed to the salerooms at Canterbury.

UK: International bidders tuned into proceedings at Canterbury Auction Galleries on October 2, 1999 in the prospect of acquiring one of the earliest ship-to-shore receivers, illustrated right, manufactured in 1908 by the founding father of commercial radio communication – Guglielmo Marconi.