Features

A private collection of 17th century lantern and longcase clocks recently came for sale at Dawsons (27.5% buyer’s premium) in Maidenhead.

Discovered as a ‘box of bits’ in the late 1960s when clearing the attic of a London residence, a ‘First Period’ lantern clock was placed in storage until being put back together in the 1980s.

Georgian regalia from two famous Scottish regiments was sold by Railtons (20% buyer’s premium) in Wooler, Northumberland, on February 20.

Medals expert familiar to millions through the Antiques Roadshow chats about his latest book telling a very personal story.

A medal with nine clasps from a soldier who was wounded in the head and twice in the thigh during the Peninsular War stood out in a recent sale held by Stanley Gibbons Baldwin’s (23% buyer’s premium).

Latest result for a ‘not in the face of the enemy’ award underlines how such honours have become a popular collecting field

If you look closely at both Lady Butler and Alphonse de Neuville’s paintings of what is probably the most famous British colonial action of the 19th century – Rorke’s Drift – you can pick out a man with a long, thick red beard wearing a blue tunic.

Despite the brief cataloguing of lot 129 in the Ellis Willis & Beckett (21.5% buyer’s premium) sale, the £4200 hammer price on February 17 indicated that bidders had fought it out for something special.

Following Operation Barbarossa, Germany’s invasion of Russia, Winston Churchill proposed the Arctic Convoys to deliver supplies to the Soviet Union via Iceland.

The golden age of topaz was the 18th and early 19th century.

Stand-out lots from seven upcoming sales

Inventive pieces that can be broken down into modular elements – transformable jewels – began with the French parure in the court of Louis XIV.

Holbeinesque is the term used to describe Victorian jewellery inspired by the Northern Renaissance and the jewels shown in the paintings and sketches of Hans Holbein.

Grays Antiques in Mayfair, close to Bond Street tube station on Davies Street, is one of London’s largest indoor art and antiques markets.

All of the first half-a-dozen issues of Viz comic are rarities – each penned by teenager Chris Donald from his bedroom in his parents’ Jesmond, Newcastle, home with help from his brother Simon and friend Jim Brownlow.

What is being promoted as “perhaps the most significant private collection of British comics ever assembled” is coming to market with two separate auction houses involved.

Fifty years ago a now little-known comic launched that spawned a much more successful title still going strong

Records continue to tumble in the vibrant US market. Hardly a week goes by without another new marker being established as comics thrive in a remarkably buoyant collectables collecting scene, or sought-after high-grade copies attract rocketing prices.

Of all the many subjects painted by Harry Davis (1885-1970) during his long and celebrated tenure at the Royal Worcester factory, among the rarest and most desirable are polar bears in an Arctic landscape.