Wiltshire

Works of art by architect-designer William Burges (1827-1881) are extremely rare – but serendipity has seen half a dozen pieces emerge recently in the regions.

This Titanic postcard has been consigned to White Star Line specialists Henry Aldridge & Son to be included in their sale on July 28 in Devizes, Wiltshire.

This Eglentine Metal sign has never come to the open market before but is on offer among about 250 lots of advertising including showcards, packaging, mirrors and over 300-400 enamel signs to be sold at The Chippenham Auction Rooms on July 21.

The small Wiltshire firm Jubilee Auction Rooms – opened in the Queen’s Golden Jubilee year in 2002 and soon to move to larger premises in Pewsey – received inquiries from all over the world when it emerged they had unearthed a remarkable jewel-decorated flask by William Burges (1827-81) in a routine house clearance.

Tributes have been paid to an antiques dealer who was drowned along with his three-year-old son in a boating accident.

FOUR people will appear in court next month in connection with a series of frauds involving foreign-based credit cards used to pay for high-value jewellery at a number of auction houses.

A 19th century brass lectern stolen from a church in Wiltshire has emerged at an antiques fair in Romania.

Moorcroft Boy recorded one of the great comebacks in racing history when he recovered from a horrific injury at Aintree in 1995 to win the Scottish National the following year.

A VERY large, hand-drawn plan of the Titanic, used in the official inquiry after it sank in 1912, has sold for £220,000 at Wiltshire auction house, Henry Aldridge & Son.

Despite recent developments in the case against the notorious Johnson family, including the recovery of stolen antiques in Worcestershire, innumerable valuable works of art remain at large.

WILTSHIRE auctioneers Netherhampton Salerooms were celebrating a new house record on March 3 after a disbound album of Far Eastern topographical drawings sold for £43,000.

THE National Association of Valuers and Auctioneers will hold their annual summer conference between 10am and 5pm on June 15 at Manor House Golf Club, Castle Combe in Wiltshire.

Wessex Auction Rooms, a new purpose-designed saleoom, has just opened on the outskirts of the Wiltshire market town of Chippenham.

IT is almost 10 years since the noted Wiltshire glass dealers Delomosne last held an exhibition with accompanying handbook, and that was the collection of cordial glasses belonging to the late John Towse.

More details have emerged of art and antiques stolen during the multi-million pound raid on Ramsbury Manor, home of property developer Harry Hyams, on the evening of February 1.

Pictures released of some of the stolen items

SINCE 1986 Christopher Gange has been a dealer in 20th Century British Art at his Katharine House Gallery at The Parade, Marlborough, Wiltshire, but for the month of July, in a new departure, he is holding an important selling exhibition of British Studio Pottery, formerly part of his private collection.

CONTINUING the recent spate of sophisticated country house thefts, valuable antiques were stolen from two homes in the south east of England in the space of a week last month.

THE remarkable sums paid in London for high quality Islamic works of art arrived in the provinces in June.

DEALERS should be aware of a stolen cheque scam that targets regular Internet bankers.