Features

Italy, like many European countries whose economies were ravaged during the war, had to face the challenge of picking itself up and starting afresh once hostilities were over.

Born partly out of necessity and partly out of a reaction to austerity, British design in the immediate post-war era underwent a flowering of innovation with new styles, new materials and a fresh impetus that resulted in a very different class of furniture.

It is the quirky designs of husband-and-wife team François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne that populate the top echelons of so much French design in the salerooms these days.

The French dealer François Laffanour, whose Galerie Downtown is on the rue de Seine in Paris, has specialised for 25 years in furnishings by post-war architects and designers.

Before the Iraq invasions in 1991 and 2003 Britain was involved in military operations in the region in both world wars.

The new terrors of the First World War also encompassed gas. The initial major attack was launched on the Eastern Front by the Germans in January 1915, then on the Western Front at Ypres three months later against French colonial troops.

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’.