Features

‘Drum’ form mustard pots – known at the time as mustard tankards or cans – first emerged in the second half of the 18th century as the fashion changed from dry to wet mustard.

This pair of mid-18th century Dresden sauceboats were once part of the huge holdings of silver used at the court of Frederick Augustus II (1733-63).

Charles Robert Ashbee’s pseudo medieval wirework silver and glass jugs and bottles rank among the Guild of Handicraft’s finest work.

For the third time in a year, a new auction record for Wedgwood Fairyland lustre has been set by Woody Auction in Douglass, Kansas.

Although Malta supported an estimated 600 makers from 1680-1820, relatively little silver from the period survived on the island.

The term pomander derives from the French pomme d’ambre, meaning ‘apple of amber’, a reference to the aromatic substances – ambergris, musk, civet, and spices – once formed into small balls and carried as protection against disease.

Richard Joyce, a member of one of the Tribes of Galway (the 14 merchant families who dominated the political, commercial and social life of the city), led an extraordinary life.

Although termed strawberry dishes, the classic early Georgian plain serving dish with raised fluted sides and a scalloped rim, were used for a variety of purposes.

Sustained scrap silver prices of more than £30 an ounce have sent large quantities of middle-of-the-road Georgian and Victorian domestic silver to the melting pot. Today, to sell well above the bullion price, it helps if silver comes with a strong narrative. ATG reports on a few great storytellers.

Scottish contemporary silver by Graham Leishman Stewart (1955-2020), squirreled away for decades in private collections, is now slowly beginning to reach the secondary market.

Irish silver pocket corkscrews from the Georgian period are not common.

The 165.024 reference Omega Seamaster 300 was one of the most robust and practical dive watches of the Sixties.

Philippe Auguste Courvoisier (1803-73), a member of the famed Courvoisier family of Swiss watchmakers, specialised in the production of watches with portraits of 19th century royalty, such as Queen Victoria, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte or, in the case of watches sold in London and Stuttgart, the Ottoman Sultan Abdulmecid I.

Jean Rousseau (1606-84) came from a renowned watchmaking family that settled in Geneva, the cradle for prosecuted French Protestants in the 1630s.

Early November is always a busy time for pocket watch collectors. In the space of a few days, specialist sales are traditionally held in Switzerland and Germany which offer a broad selection of historical watches for all tastes and most budgets.

The Rolex reference 6150, often dubbed the ‘Pre-Explorer’, was introduced in 1953 and famously tested by various Everest mountaineering expeditions over the coming years, including the first official summit by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay of Mount Everest on May 29, 1953.

Auctions with half an eye on the gift-giving season proliferate throughout late November and early December.

Lovers’ eyes became a la mode from c.1790 and remained fashionable in the courts and affluent families of England, Russia, France and North America until the early 1830s.

The gold rush that followed the discovery of significant deposits in New South Wales and Victoria in 1851, was a catalyst for the first colonial jewellery expressing an Australian identify.