Clocks, Watches & Jewellery

A seemingly never-ending bidding match ensued at Cortrie in Hamburg on May 9 for a tourbillon-watch by the German watchmaker Richard Miklosch (1939-2014) .

With Sixties and Seventies style again part of the collecting zeitgeist, vintage Kutchinsky pieces are now common currency for the best of the UK’s antique and vintage jewellery dealers and auction houses. However, it also pays to look further afield.

Duke’s (25% buyer’s premium) of Dorchester sold a Victorian diamond and natural saltwater pearl double pendant brooch for £570,000 earlier this year, a house record for jewellery.

The Fine Jewellery & Watches sale in Bellmans in Billingshurst on May 21 includes this Boucheron yellow guilloché enamel and brilliant cut diamond flower brooch.

Benedetto Pistrucci (1783-1855), who worked as chief engraver and chief medallist to the Royal Mint, had two daughters who he trained in gem engraving.

With so much gold and silver jewellery heading for the melting pot in recent months, Spicers (20% buyer’s premium) in Old Goole, East Yorkshire, was pleasantly surprised by the performance of this tiny 0.7g 9ct gold and enamel charm.

ATG's publishing director recounts the joy of wearing an upcycled accessory

Founded in Spain in 1875 by brothers Fernand, Jules, Léopold and Jacques, Lacloche Frères became one of the great French jewellers of the Art Deco period.

Perth saleroom Lindsay Burns (22% buyer’s premium) posted a new house record with an exceptional piece of period jewellery at its latest three-day sale.

Interest in glyphic art, that reached its collecting apogee during Grand Tour collecting, is resurgent once more.

The grim mortality rate of 17th century Britain precipitated a taste for memento mori jewellery that reached its height of popularity in the early 1700s.

The 18th and 19th centuries were the golden age of topaz.

The watch-makers in the Vallée de Joux in Switzerland were a textbook 19th century cottage industry – typically self-employed men, and some women, working either in the ateliers based in the hamlet of Crêt-Meylan or at home. Seldom did they receive credit for their great skill.

Two years after a Wiltshire auction house set a record for Titanic memorabilia with ‘the watch recovered from the body of John Jacob Astor’ at £900,000, another timekeeper making precisely the same claim has sold in Chicago for $800,000 (£592,000).

As vintage wristwatches continue to dominate the watch market, finding interesting examples at reasonable prices has become a challenge. However, opportunities are out there

The London watch and clock maker Brounker Watts (c.1670-1717), an apprentice to Joseph Knibb, became a member of the Clockmakers Company in 1697.