Auctioneers

Among the earliest examples of Australian gold rush jewellery are the simple signet rings sold to miners in the settlement of Ballarat in the 1850s as a memento of the boomtown days.

The London-based design company Isokon, which produced furniture by Wells Coates and Marcel Breuer, and Gerald Summers’ firm Makers of Simple Furniture both explored the radical possibilities of lamination.

As the Depression took hold, the clamour for luxury goods in tropical hardwoods, silver and shagreen was replaced by a demand for less expensive consumer goods that combined the modern aesthetic with new materials and industrial production.

Shelley produced the geometric Vogue and Mode shape tea and coffee wares between 1930-32 - both the designs of Eric Slater (1902-84) who had worked at the factory since the end of the First World War.

New Zealand-born architect Keith Murray (1892-1981) began to make designs for Wedgwood on a commercial basis in 1933, joining a stable of designers that included Daisy Makeig-Jones and John Skeaping.

With this year marking the 100th anninversary of the exhibition that gave Art Deco its name, we report on the British designers whose creations appear on the market

The Fine Sale on March 26 at Cheffins in Cambridge included a group of pictures consigned by a descendant of the artist known as Philip Villamil of Jamaica (1814-78).

Graham Slater (1927-2024) was fascinated by relics of Stuart and Georgian Britain. His wife Rosemary shared his passions, including his love of mudlarking, exploring the banks of the Thames for fragments washed up by each new tide.

A sword presented to one of only three Jewish winners of the Victoria Cross in the Second World War has sold for a hammer price of £7200 at Plymouth saleroom Eldreds (20% buyer’s premium).

The Brontë Parsonage was the successful bidder at £32,000 (plus premium) when an original watercolour drawing by Emily Brontë came for sale in London.

‘Tutti Frutti’ is the name given to Cartier’s range of brightly coloured jewels in the Indian style from the 1920s-30s.

Sussex and Kent saleroom Gorringe’s begins a new chapter this month under full family ownership and new management.

A white-glove sale tells its own story about the health of a market

Before independence in 1947, the Naga hill tribes of north-east India were considered an exotic society, radically different in culture and beliefs from the better-known Hindu peoples of the plains and renowned for their fierce resistance to British rule.

Carl (1883-1946) and Rosa Askonas (1891-1980), were the toast of 1920s Austrian society.

The sale at Bellmans (25% buyer’s premium) in Billingshurst, West Sussex on February 17 included a small silver gilt rococo-style cream jug of a type that remains something of an enigma.