Features

Local tourist bodies believe that Knox can do for the Isle of Man what Mackintosh has done for Glasgow.

Dr Stephen Martin first encountered Archibald Knox in a New York bookstore in 1990.

The Art Deco design movement found a unique expression in Cotswolds School furniture - one that sought to blend clean lines with traditional English materials and craftsmanship.

Auctioneer and valuer Clive Stewart-Lockhart has written a new biography of one of British Art Deco’s foremost figures - his great aunt Mary Stewart Lockhart, better known as Betty Joel (1894-1985).

These two silver lots bear the mark of Henry George Murphy (1884-1939), whose Falcon Studio produced some of the finest English silver of the inter-war era.

Only a decade ago Carlton Ware designer Violet Elmer (1907-88) was a relative unknown compared with her contemporaries Clarice Cliff, Susie Cooper and Charlotte Rhead.

The London-based design company Isokon, which produced furniture by Wells Coates and Marcel Breuer, and Gerald Summers’ firm Makers of Simple Furniture both explored the radical possibilities of lamination.

As the Depression took hold, the clamour for luxury goods in tropical hardwoods, silver and shagreen was replaced by a demand for less expensive consumer goods that combined the modern aesthetic with new materials and industrial production.

Shelley produced the geometric Vogue and Mode shape tea and coffee wares between 1930-32 - both the designs of Eric Slater (1902-84) who had worked at the factory since the end of the First World War.

New Zealand-born architect Keith Murray (1892-1981) began to make designs for Wedgwood on a commercial basis in 1933, joining a stable of designers that included Daisy Makeig-Jones and John Skeaping.

With this year marking the 100th anninversary of the exhibition that gave Art Deco its name, we report on the British designers whose creations appear on the market

‘Tutti Frutti’ is the name given to Cartier’s range of brightly coloured jewels in the Indian style from the 1920s-30s.

A white-glove sale tells its own story about the health of a market

Carl (1883-1946) and Rosa Askonas (1891-1980), were the toast of 1920s Austrian society.

The Fine Jewellery sale at Dreweatts (26% buyer’s premium) in Newbury on March 19 included two quite different lots from the subcontinent - and both were well received.

Far more fluent than us in the language of jewellery and stones, Georgians and the Victorians would immediately have made the link between snakes and eternal love.

Metal-detecting finds, properly reported to the Portable Antiquities Scheme and since disclaimed as Treasure, are increasing significantly the supply of pre-Georgian jewels. Some fine examples have appeared at auction of late.

A Cartier Egyptian revival jewel, previously known only from an advert that appeared in The Illustrated London News in the 1920s, sold for £55,000 at Woolley & Wallis (26% buyer’s premium).

A Cartier necklace with a rare pink diamond was offered by Tennants (22% buyer’s premium) of North Yorkshire on March 15. It sold towards top hopes at £190,000.

A c.1960 Barbie doll and related items by Mattel is estimated at £300-500 in the Specialist Collectable Toys Auction on April 10 at Sheffield Auction Gallery.