Governor’s silver teapot donated to US museum
A silver teapot that belonged to the last colonial governor of Virginia has been donated by a British descendant to the Colonial Williamsburg collection.
The diminutive neoclassical teapot, made in London in 1771 by the Swedish-born silversmith Andrew Fogelberg, carries the family crest of John Murray (c.1730-1809), Lord Dunmore.
The deeply unpopular Scottish peer endured a strife-filled tenure in Williamsburg – his decision to seize the state’s store of gunpowder in April 1775 ending all semblance of peaceful governance. His wife and children later fled to Britain with the family valuables.
A detail of the crest on the silver teapot.
Angus Sladen, a descendant who lives in Hampshire, donated the teapot after deciding “Colonial Williamsburg seemed the ideal home for it.”
With a loose, rather than hinged, lid, this is one of relatively few objects from Fogelberg’s workshop to survive: he is better remembered as the silversmith who trained Paul Storr.
Del Boy’s ‘Harrison’ sells at £28,000
An ‘antique’ prop that featured in the BBC comedy Only Fools and Horses has sold for a hammer price of £28,000 (plus 24% premium) at Dudley auction house Aston’s.
The ‘Harrison Lesser Watch’ – a lost John Harrison marine chronometer – featured in the 1996 Christmas special titled Time On Our Hands.
Characters Del Boy and Rodney – whose classic line throughout the long-running series was ‘this time next year we will be millionaires’ – finally strike it rich when the watch they find in a lock-up sells for £6.2m at Sotheby’s.
The TV prop, in a presentation case with certificates, had been purchased by the vendor from the Prop Store in London.
The winning bidders run a skip company in Dudley and are big fans of the show, owning three Robin Reliant vans similar to Del Boy’s famous canary yellow three-wheeler.
Letter cache from Victorian patron
A cache of letters written to an important Pre-Raphaelite patron brought a total of £25,000 at Shropshire auctioneers Trevanion & Dean. Most of the 66 letters, which the auctioneers said were unearthed in a routine house clearance, were addressed to Constantine Ionides (1833-1900) who bequeathed over 1000 pictures to the V&A. The highest individual price of £2500 came for a lot of a five letters by Rossetti concerning The Day Dream which the artist completed in 1880.
This coconut shell spoon has gone missing from Galerie Meyer, a specialist in Oceanic and Eskimo art in Paris.
Tribal art missing from Paris gallery
A Anthony Meyer says the item was stolen from the gallery at around 13.00 on Tuesday, September 11.
The whimsical spoon in the form of a bird was created in Melanesia, Papua New Guinea in the 20th century and was collected in the field in the 1970s or 80s. Meyer has asked that anyone with information on the object contact a local police force or call 101.
Miniature Armada blocked by DCMS
A temporary export ban has been placed upon an Elizabethan miniature depicting the defeat of the Spanish Armada in the hope a buyer can be found to match the asking price of £210,000.
The miniature, painted c.1600 by an unidentified Dutch artist using the monogram VHE, shows Queen Elizabeth I watching the naval engagement, accompanied by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.
A temporary export ban has been placed upon this Elizabethan miniature depicting the defeat of the Spanish Armada in the hope a buyer can be found to match the asking price of £210,000.
It is one of only two miniatures known that represent the 1588 Armada: little is known of its whereabouts until it was sent on long-term loan to the Rijksmuseum in 1975.
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport says a decision on the export licence application will be deferred until December 13 with an extension to March, 13, if a serious intention to purchase it is made at the recommended price of £210,000 (plus VAT of £6600).
In Numbers
£10.1m
The total including premium raised at Sotheby’s for the collection of Frank Dunphy, Damien Hirst’s former accountant, business manager and mentor.
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