Medals

ON December 9, Morton and Eden are to offer what is possibly the most important collection of Renaissance medals to come onto the market in decades.

THE first Conspicuous Gallantry Cross group to appear at auction also became the highest-priced lot to sell via ATG's live bidding platform the-saleroom.com when it was hammered down for £88,000 at Dix Noonan Webb on September 18.

This rare medal by the Glasgow silversmith Robert Gray & Son from c.1807 commemorates a successful campaign of the previous year to resist imposition of duties on the local tobacco trade.

This rare medal issued to those involved in the 1916 Easter Rising is up for grabs in the collector’s auction at Plymouth Auction Rooms on February 16.

A recent federal law, designed to preserve the integrity of United States medals and decorations, is creating chaos within the militaria collecting field.

THE Paris firm of Bourgey was founded in Paris in 1895. Now under the direction of the granddaughter of the founder, Sabine Bourgey, it is still going strong if the recent sale on June 3 is anything to go by.

LONG before Heineken, Allsopp & Sons’ Burton ale had a claim to be the beer which reached the parts other beers could not reach – bottles of it accompanied Sir George Strong Nares’ expedition attempting to reach the South Pole in 1875.

This Women’s Social and Political Union medal for valour was awarded to Mary Richardson, the Canadian-born militant suffragette who, in protest at the re-arrest of Emmeline Pankhurst in March 1914, slashed the ‘Rokeby’ Venus with an axe at the National Gallery.

Italian Medals – c.1530-1600 by Philip Attwood, British Museum Press. £250 hb, two volumes. ISBN 01741 08618. Available from Oxbow (+ 44 [0]1865 241249) or Thomas Heneage Art Books, 42 Duke Street, London SW1 6DJ (+ 44 [0]20 7930 9223.

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.

There is to be a major sale of Irish coins and medals in Dublin next year, on Friday, February 21, at the time of the Dublin International Coin Fair. This is being jointly hosted by James Adam of Dublin and Bonhams under their alias Glendining’s.

More Renaissance items came up at Arsantiqva (15% buyer’s premium) at the Westbury Hotel on April 19 with the first of three tranches of material relating to the serene city of Venice.

Any dealer, collector or curator would love to get hold of the ultimate reference catalogue of Victorian artistic design, especially if it was bound in gilt stamped red morocco and velvet housed in a purpose-built satinwood cabinet complete with four volumes of jury reports and a case of five medals.

British Campaign Medals, by Peter Duckers 1815-1914

As demonstration that one should always be alert outside one’s narrow field, it is worth citing the Civil War piece, pictured, that was offered in a Jewellery sale at Phillips London on October 3.