Features

Two Victoria Cross medals awarded during the Indian Mutiny offered by Morton & Eden (20% buyer’s premium) in London sold to the same buyer.

Hughie Green (1920-97) is well known as star of film, radio and TV, such as Opportunity Knocks – and a colourful personal life such as being father to Paula Yates. However, he also had a long and eventful career in aviation.

The Falklands War was 38 years ago now. However, for medal collectors the conflict is very much in mind, as evidenced by two six-figure results recently at London saleroom Dix Noonan Webb (24% buyer’s premium).

This early 17th century silver vervel or hawking ring includes in italic script Kyng James and the quartered arms of the Stuart kings.

Four early pieces of Newcastle plate and a selection of other silver rarities sold at auction this autumn

With the defeat of Catholic attempts against the Protestant monarchy in the 17th and 18th centuries, penal laws were imposed in Ireland.

Small Britannia standard silver bowls are the signature pieces the Scottish silversmith Michael Lloyd (c.1950).

As hugely personal items and of relatively small melt value, spoons represent the great majority of English domestic silver items surviving from the pre-civil war period.

A rare Charles II commemorative silver thimble sold for £980 at Bleasdales (20% buyer’s premium).

Sotheby’s (26/21/14.9% buyer’s premium) Important Chinese Art sale on November 4 included two spectacular Qing dragon dishes – both consigned from continental European sources and both in near-perfect condition.

The term 'qianjiangcai' refers to a ‘pastel coloured’ palette of enamels used by Tongzhi (1856-75) and Guangxu (1875-1908), porcelain painters in the years after the Taiping rebellion and the destruction of the Jingdezhen kilns.

The November 11 Islamic & Oriental sale at John Nicholson’s (25% buyer’s premium) in Fernhurst was topped at £6200 (estimate £400-600) by this 19th century cinnabar lacquer table mirror.

Sworders (25% buyer’s premium) latest Asian art sale in Stansted Mountfitchet included this ‘splashed’ gilt-bronze incense burner from the Qing (1644-1911) period.

The unexpected highlight of Dreweatts’ (25% buyer’s premium) sale on November 12 was provided by this copper red glazed globular form bowl.

The sale held by Matthew Barton at Olympia Auctions (25% buyer’s premium) on November 18 included a series of pairs of 6in (15cm) diameter porcelain bowls from a private European collection assembled in Hong Kong in the 1980s-90s.

“The first sight I had of the vase was from an old photograph and my heart skipped a beat,” said Chiswick Auctions (25% buyer’s premium) specialist Lazarus Halstead of this spectacular 20in (51cm) Qing famille rose vase.

It is thought that the earliest Chinese porcelain monteith appeared c.1715, coinciding with the establishment of the East India Company’s factory in Canton.

Pictured below are two textbook Kangxi (1662-1722) period blue and white vases.

On November 11 in West Norwood, London, Roseberys (25% buyer’s premium) offered 50 lots from the estate of Anglo-Dutch collectors Albert (1927-2018) and Leonie van Daalen-Roell (1930-2018). Many pieces – typically early bronzes and sancai glazed ceramics from the classic era – had been bought from London dealer Ben Janssens Oriental Art.

In November 2008, Christie’s held a sale in London of Chinese works of art that included lots from the collection of Baron (1894-1991) and Baroness von Oertzen (1908-2007). The couple, who had settled in South Africa after the Second World War, acquired a deep knowledge of Chinese art and a large and varied collection, buying from the 1960s onwards.