Silver & Silver-plated items

GLASGOW in the 18th century was a shadow of the powerhouse it was to become during the Industrial Revolution. In the mid-18th century, when the primary source of wealth on the Clyde was trade in tobacco, rum and sugar from the New World, the population stood at a modest 17,500, enough to support only a handful of goldsmiths and silversmiths.

Silver made in London has borne the distinctive leopard symbol hallmark since 1300 AD, making it one of the earliest forms of consumer protection.

IN these time-strapped days of TV dinners and takeaways, grand dining is something of a rarity.

BONHAMS Chester hosted a 484-lot collectable ceramics and applied arts sale on April 27.

THE vicar of St Thomas the Apostle in Hanwell is appealing to dealers to look out for an altar cross stolen from the West London parish church on May 20.

IN Amsterdam, if you pay close attention to the silver sales, you occasionally find a British-made object tucked away beneath the massing foliage of prized Dutch cutlery and tableware. It normally sits quietly, not causing much of a stir.

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.

DESPITE the well-documented vagaries of the silver and electroplate market, if vendors can forget the price history of the previous two decades it is still possible to hold a successful sale of country house tablewares.

FOLLOWING relegation, the on-running saga of Leeds United’s finances no doubt will mean that the club will end up selling more of their players over the summer. However, spare a thought for Crouch End Vampires F.C., one of the longest established amateur football clubs, that literally ended up selling the family silver at Bonhams Bath (17.5% buyer premium) back on March 15.

AT Gorringes’ (15% buyer's premium) April 27-29 sale, specialist Aaron Dean was satisfied with the reaction to some 200 lots of silver but, with the market for routine tea services and so on remaining fairly moribund, it is the smaller collectables which catch the eye.

ANOTHER piece of wine-related silver was among the better sellers at Olivers (10% buyer's premium) April 1 sale in the form of an Edwardian monteith.

SOME 100 lots of silver and plate at Amersham Auction Rooms' (15% buyer's premium) April 1 400-lot sale largely bore out the current perception of the market that wine-related items will sell in an otherwise moribund market.

APPEAL Court judges have lifted the punishment given to a London dealer convicted of handling £1.5m worth of stolen silver after hearing how he had committed the crimes in order to pay for his wife’s cancer treatment.

OFFERED at Edinburgh’s Royal College of Surgeons, a 169-lot section of Scottish provincial silver provided many of the highlights at Thomson Roddick & Medcalf’s (15% buyer's premium) March 29 sale.

Pictured right is one of two major pieces of Georg Jensen silver stolen in a raid on Denmark’s National Art Gallery in the early hours of May 2. The thieves involved got away with an estimated £70,000 worth of silver that formed part of an exhibition featuring the work of the celebrated Danish silversmith.

SMALL items in the form of a 100-lot silver and jewellery section were the backbone to the April 1 outing at Martel Maides Auctions (15% buyer's premium), in particular nine pieces of scarce Channel Island silver from a Jersey collection, all of which sold and most well above estimate.

WOOLLEY & Wallis sold the first tranche of the caddy spoon collection assembled over the past half century by John Norie on April 20.

SATISFYING though Woolley & Wallis’s sale undoubtedly was, the general run of fine silver is still bringing little more than the prices it was achieving a decade and more back.

ON Friday April 2, this distinctive silver and 18 carat rose gold Boucheron lady’s minaudière, pictured right, 5 1/4in (13.5cm) across, was stolen from the Pullman Gallery at 14 King Street in St James’s.

ON Thursday March 18 thieves broke into the Oxfordshire home of ex-jockey and racehorse trainer Stan Mellor and stole silver and works of art.