Features

The impressive arms offered in London from a collection which supplied weapons for many films were far from being theatrical props

December 10 marked a significant step in the history of specialist sporting and antique gun auction house Holts (25-20% buyer’s premium).

If proof were needed that firearms sales are simply conducted on a completely different scale in the US, one need look no further than the three-day sale at Rock Island Auctions (18.5% buyer’s premium) in Illinois on December 6-8.

One fascinating section of a recent Thomas Del Mar (25% buyer’s premium) sale featured Stone Age and Viking weapons and artefacts from a European private collection.

Shirley Mueller is a US neuroscientist, author and Asian art collector focused on Chinese export porcelain. Her book 'Inside the Head of a Collector: Neuropsychological Forces at Play' has recently been published.

Two spectacular early-19th century British presentation sabres have turned up in the salerooms recently, one in London and the other in Munich.

This pair of 19th century electroplated cups, offered by Andrew Smith & Son (21% buyer’s premium) in Alresford on December 11, is stamped for the noted Sydney silversmith Evan Jones (1846-1917).

It took just one sale to disperse a collection of pre-civil war silver painstakingly amassed in just over a quarter of a century at the rate of one piece a year.

Edwardian silver table bells modelled as tortoises are not too hard to find but silver pigs are a much rarer beast. Accordingly, it was surprising to see two appear on two successive days at winter sales.

Originally medieval drinking vessels, wassail bowls became highly decorative status symbols by the 19th century as this large silver-mounted walnut example shows.

The sale at Kingham & Orme (20% buyer’s premium) in Evesham on December 6-7 included the second instalment of the remarkable Shennan collection of silver mustard pots, this time featuring examples made in the reigns of George IV to Victoria (1821-1901).

The sale at Cheffins (22.5% buyer’s premium) in Cambridge on December 12 included a cache of Victorian and earlier silver from the collection of Delaval Astley, 23rd Baron Hastings (b.1960).

Pin cushions have their own niche market in the novelty silver field. Nineteen Edwardian examples were offered at a sale at Woolley & Wallis (25% buyer’s premium) in Salisbury last year.

The Design sale at Christie’s New York (25/20% buyer’s premium) on December 13 included the return to the auction room of one of the famous series of electroplated teapots made by James Dixon & Sons, Sheffield, c.1879, to designs by Christopher Dresser.

Although turned down at the time by the British Museum, a 2nd century vase with Bacchic ornament found by Gavin Hamilton near Hadrian’s villa in Tivoli c.1771 proved a sensation with 18th century connoisseurs.

An atypical visitor to a recent sale at Canterbury Auction Galleries (24% buyer’s premium) was a Norwegian silver gilt brudekrone dating from the late 18th or early 19th century.

Alongside pieces made in Kinsale, Galway and Waterford, silver from the small County Cork town of Youghal is among the scarcest of all Irish provincial silver. Only a handful of pieces survive that carry the punning town mark of a yawl.

Sotheby’s (25% buyer’s premium) sale of art and antiques from the Regency manor house Spetchley Park in Wychavon, Worcestershire, held in London on December 11, included a range of ‘kunstkammer’ objects amassed by the Berkeley family in the 19th century.

This impressive and rare pair of silver table candlesticks with cluster columns, square bases and drip cups had no visible hallmarks but is probably Dutch and late 17th century in date.

This small Gothic Revival beaker was made by ecclesiastical metal manufacturer John Hardman (Birmingham, 1848) at the height of the first partnership with AWN Pugin.