Features

In this year also marking the centenary of the RAF, Bosleys’ (20% buyer’s premium) fourth annual sale of aviation collectables on September 13, held in conjunction with (and at) sister auction house Marlows in Stafford, included a large number of related items.

If anything sums up the sense of slaughter that came from the British experience of the First World War and how that affected so many families, it is a lot coming up in Bonhams’ November 21 Medals, Bonds, Banknotes and Coins auction.

The centenary of the Armistice has been marked by the appearance of some poignant lots at auction revealing the human cost.

As soon as the devastating power of machine guns in the First World War became clear, the British Army abandoned its earlier policy of attaching a section of just two guns to each infantry battalion or cavalry regiment.

C&T Auctioneers’ (20% buyer’s premium) November 6 sale titled After the Great War Centenary also marked the final slice of a three-part offering of what specialist Matthew Tredwen called “one of the finest collections of First World War German militaria to have been sold at auction in the UK”.

Such was the scale of the Great War that the Cameronians regiment alone raised 27 battalions from 1914-18.

British Empire soldiers included more than a million Indian Army troops serving overseas.

The ‘heroic age’ of Polar Exploration coincided with the First World War. Shackleton’s perilous 1914-17 expedition was conducted against the backdrop of war in the northern hemisphere, while other earlier Polar explorers found themselves caught up in the conflict.

In April this year Spink held an exhibition to mark the centenary of the founding of the RAF, ahead of a dedicated section in its two-day Orders, Decorations and Medals sale the same month.

It was a British engineer, Robert Whitehead (1823-1905) – working in Austria at the instigation of the Austrian Navy – who developed the first self-propelled torpedo in the 1850s.

The vast human toll of the First World War did not end with the Armistice. On New Year’s Eve 2018 Oberleutnant Friedrich Ritter Von Röth committed suicide at the age of 25, as a result of being shattered at Germany’s defeat.

A Distinguished Flying Cross medal group offered at Stroud Auctions (18% buyer’s premium) on November 7-8 underlines the sometimes rudimentary nature of the embyonic early war in the air.

This classic First World war recruitment poster with the Old Lion of Britain calling on the Young Lions to answer the call to fight is estimated at £200-400 in Onslows’ poster auction on December 14.

A popular form of gift or memento to loved ones as troops left for the front was a ‘sweetheart brooch’.

The Hundred Days Offensive broke the back of German resistance in 1918 and by November the Allies were surging well beyond the once static Western Front.

From c.1969-75, Charles de Temple (b.1929) – the son of the American film actor Tom Mix – created his series of ‘nervous jewels’, employing prickly cultural designs in two-coloured gold wire. This 18ct gold and beryl dress ring is a good example.

The exact history of this 200-year-old saltwater pearl is unknown but it is undoubtedly a gem of considerable merit.

Tiffany exhibited only gold jewellery at the 1878 Paris exposition, including a collection of ‘Japanesque’ pieces.

This 18ct two-colour gold and enamel Hebe brooch to a design by Georges Braque, c.1962, carries an estimate of $2500-3500 at Leslie Hindman’s Important Jewelry sale in Chicago on December 3.

In the end, it was diamonds, not cake, that triggered the tragic downfall of Marie-Antoinette (1755-93) and her family. Even though the doomed queen was innocent of conspiracy, it was the affair of a diamond necklace that lit the powder-keg of revolution.