Silver & Silver-plated items

THE best seller at Tennants’ sale on November 22-23 in the Yorkshire Dales was consigned by a Yorkshire family with connections to the famous silversmith who made it.

‘Little mesters’ were the sub-contractors of the Sheffield cutlery industry – self-employed artisans who hired space in large factories to forge, grind and haft their blades, the factory owner receiving a substantial cut from their sale.

Owners of silver spoons are generally believed to have a head start in life, and the continuing bouyancy of this market might keep a few heads above water in the coming months.

Four of the six lots of antique silver from Her Majesty’s Treasury due to be sold by Bonhams & Brooks on October 30 were withdrawn from auction the day before the sale.

THE acceptance that silver has long lost its shine does not mean that there is no active market, just that prices are lower. After this sale of 340 lots at Phillips’ Midlands operation on 19 September the familiar picture emerged of modern pieces struggling, standard material chugging along and items with appeal beyond the metal doing rather well.

Job lots in local sales that are not widely advertised can sometimes yield the greatest bargains. As such, this William III oval silver spice box, right, was the treasure acquired with the detritus of a job lot by a local dealer at a Nottinghamshire auction for just £12.

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.

GENERAL silver remains a quiet market but novelty material is booming as shown when this 51/2in (14cm) silver-encased desk bell by Gy & Co,in the form of a tortoise, was offered at the July 17,18 sale held at Aylsham, by Keys (10% buyer’s premium).

Sometimes the most famous names can be found in the unlikeliest places. Biddle & Webb auctioneer Nicholas Davies had been called out to view a Georgian drop leaf table in a local property but noticed this early trefid spoon, pictured, in a small box of cutlery.

UK: If proof were needed that it is collector’s silver that is the most desirable category of ware in today’s market one could have had no better example than the sale held by Bonhams & Brooks (15/10% buyer’s premium) last Thursday, July 5. This 261-lot auction was especially strong on vertu and collectors items swelled by a number of private collections.

UK: PRICES for standard silver remain subdued but the 330 lots of plate and silver offered here did include nine four-figure bids and enjoyed an 86 per cent take-up and a total of £96,600.

NETHERLANDS: MEDAL collectors should watch Sotheby’s Amsterdam (20 per cent buyer’s premium) silver sales. For the second time this year this house has included medals of mainly Netherlands interest in a silver sale.

UK: TRADITIONAL silver may be a dull market, but make the metal decorative, like the pair of London, 1860 candelabra offered at Peter Wilson auctioneers in Nantwich, Cheshire, and it will shine.

UK: A number of auctioneers have remarked on a rather flat silver market of late but the Surrey auctioneers Crow's saw no such reluctance among buyers with a number of offerings going well above estimate.

Silver spirit labels (‘Holland’ refers to Dutch Gin) are not quite two a penny, but they are among the cheapest drinking trinkets available.

UK: THE current strength of the silver market for unusual pieces has been discussed in theAntiques Trade Gazette of recent weeks and the Cambridge auctioneers two-day sale showed that the trend is no different in East Anglia.

UK: FRESH on the market, reasonably estimated and of undoubted quality – but three silver dessert baskets offered at Somerset still provided a surprise when, as has happened elsewhere, the ‘right’ piece of silver exceeds all expectations.

British Campaign Medals, by Peter Duckers 1815-1914

Silverware from Quincy Church US: WHEN the United First Parish Church of Quincy, Mass., established as the Braintree Church in 1639, was forced to choose between keeping a roof overhead or selling ecclesiastical silver so valuable that it was rarely used, the congregation voted to sell the silver.

The British Hallmarking Council has ruled that the old Dealer’s Notice for those selling gold, silver or platinum, will cease to be valid from March 31 next year.