Silver & Silver-plated items

A substantial collection of 18th and 19th century Cape silver, made by European silversmiths practising in South Africa, is coming for sale at Strauss & Co in Johannesberg.

Stock of retiring dealer offered at auction includes items with fascinating backgrounds

The workers who were given the task in 1869 of demolishing a medieval patrician house in the Bavarian city of Regensburg found much more than they had expected.

A handsome pair of Regency period Egyptian Revival silver candlesticks with a Jane Austen connection sold well above hopes at Lacy Scott & Knight in Bury St Edmunds.

Oxfordshire sale includes minaudière designed as an alternative to traditional handbags - plus a more conventional ‘French Jazz Age’ evening bag

In 1962, Lord John Hope, the Minister of Works in the Macmillan government commissioned David Mellor (1930-2009) to ‘supply silver you have designed to every British embassy in the world’.

Pictured below are three fine silver and enamel cigarette cases dating from the turn of the 20th century sold at auction in recent weeks.

The popular dealer amassed an impressive array of items assayed in the city

From the late 18th century, Birmingham was the centre for the making of ‘toys’ – small decorative objects including boxes, nutmeg graters, buckles, caddy spoons, vinaigrettes and rattles, fashioned from silver.

The many models of anthropomorphic primates that proliferated British decorative arts in the 1860s typically reference Charles Darwin’s provocative and often lampooned 'On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection', first published in 1859.

This 2ft 6in (75cm) high five-light candelabrum hallmarked for Sheffield 1844 and the firm Creswick & Co (Thomas, James and Nathaniel Creswick) is both an impressive example of early Victorian table silver and a memento of the heroic era of polar exploration.

Spoons are among the very few pieces of English silver surviving from the period of Wars of the Roses.

A lot offering a Shanghai Municipal Jubilee Medal, November 17, 1893, proved so appealing that it sold at five times the top estimate.

This bright-eyed and bushy-tailed claret jug designed in 1882 by Alexander Crichton sold at a hammer price of £36,000 at Tennants of North Yorkshire.

All too often kind words are expressed about someone only when one learns of their sad demise.

Silverware with connections to key figures from the famous French firm of Puiforcat proved to be a major component in a sale of items from a Parisian family collection held by Beaussant Lefèvre (28% buyer’s premium).

I read with particular interest Graham Smith’s announcement last June of his intention to retire after 50 years in the antiques business. He began working for Owen Humble in April 1973.