London

This pair of mid-18th century Dresden sauceboats were once part of the huge holdings of silver used at the court of Frederick Augustus II (1733-63).

Gray MCA has a couple of busy months in store. From January, the fashion illustration, design and textiles gallery stages Drawing on Style: Original Fashion Illustration at Edinburgh’s Dovecot Studios.

The term pomander derives from the French pomme d’ambre, meaning ‘apple of amber’, a reference to the aromatic substances – ambergris, musk, civet, and spices – once formed into small balls and carried as protection against disease.

Sustained scrap silver prices of more than £30 an ounce have sent large quantities of middle-of-the-road Georgian and Victorian domestic silver to the melting pot. Today, to sell well above the bullion price, it helps if silver comes with a strong narrative. ATG reports on a few great storytellers.

Shakespearean themed watercolour takes hammer price of £75,000 as confirmation of the artist’s status

In the run-up to Christmas, Oliver Forge and Brendan Lynch turn their attention to the Pacific with 'A Voyage to the South Seas: Artefacts from Melanesia & Polynesia', showing at their London gallery at 16 Pall Mall from December 1-5.

A fleeting moment caught by the artist but not intended for sale encapsulates the appeal of watercolours

Philippe Auguste Courvoisier (1803-73), a member of the famed Courvoisier family of Swiss watchmakers, specialised in the production of watches with portraits of 19th century royalty, such as Queen Victoria, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte or, in the case of watches sold in London and Stuttgart, the Ottoman Sultan Abdulmecid I.

Jean Rousseau (1606-84) came from a renowned watchmaking family that settled in Geneva, the cradle for prosecuted French Protestants in the 1630s.

The Rolex reference 6150, often dubbed the ‘Pre-Explorer’, was introduced in 1953 and famously tested by various Everest mountaineering expeditions over the coming years, including the first official summit by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay of Mount Everest on May 29, 1953.

‘Settle bindings’ are the name given to a small number of surviving books published between c.1700-23 by Elkanah Settle (1648-1724).