Clocks, Watches & Jewellery

Chiswick Auctions (25% buyer’s premium) was another of the London salerooms that held a designated sale in Islamic week.

A rare 16th or 17th century gold ‘toadstone’ ring comes for sale at Sworders in November 23 with expectations of £3000-5000.

In his diary entry for August 12, 1950, the German writer and Nobel Prize recipient Thomas Mann described a meeting with his daughter-in-law Gret, who had married his youngest son Michael in 1939, and her 10-year-old son Frido in a café in Innsbruck.

The Fine Wristwatches & Pens auction at Chiswick Auctions includes a rare variant of perhaps the most celebrated of all Rolex ‘tool’ watches: a 1970s Submariner with the so-called ‘single red’ Mark IV dial.

Dreweatts’ November 23 sale includes jewels from the collection of Renée Louise Marie de Rothschild (1927-2015).

Auction consultant tells us about his own collection.

A look at upcoming jewellery auction lots

Era of pop art and protests also brought fresh design beyond the earlier ‘tool’ template

Queen Victoria gave many gifts to family, friends and servants, often commemorating notable events in her life.

André Romain Guilmet’s industrial themed clocks, the epitome of Victorian ‘progress’, are an ever-popular series.

Natalie Smith owns Woodbridge Antiques in Suffolk and specialises in silver and jewellery.

If horology is your passion then two events coming up will prove timely.

A single-owner collection of watches assembled over many decades and spanning 500 years of horology was offered by Aguttes (25/23% buyer’s premium) in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris.

A couple of weeks after the Aguttes watches auction another collection in the same category went under the hammer in Paris.

Charles de Temple is much admired as a key figure in the British 1960s modernist movement – one of the designers who ushered bold and abstract jewellery to the forefront of fashion.

Among the eye-catchers at Wendl in Rudolstadt from October 27-29 is an example of the world’s first functioning lighter.

Archibald Knox’s work for Liberty & Co often drew on the rich cultural heritage of his native Isle of Man.

Literally the highlight of Halls’ (23% buyer’s premium) Autumn Sale was a hall lantern demonstrating showy high Victorian taste at its most confident.