Scientific Instruments
Items relating to scientific history are a popular collecting area in which number of specialist dealers and auctioneers operate. The field overlaps into sectors such as antique tools, technology, medicine and maritime history.
Objects in this area that regularly appear on the market include microscopes, telescopes, optical devices, globes, sundials and astrolabes as well as dental, drawing and navigational instruments.
Monkey business – Swiss museum buys automaton at Bristol auction
19 January 2016A museum in Switzerland has acquired this extraordinary monkey band automaton at an online-only auction conducted by East Bristol Auctions, in Hanham, Bristol.
Royal Institution to sell ‘non-core’ items
28 October 2015Scientific, medical and natural history books from the library of the Royal Institution are to be sold at Christie’s on December 1.
Dealers bring Scott’s ‘Golden Age’ clocks back to market
24 April 2015What is billed as “the best collection of English clocks that has come to the market in living memory” will go on sale later this year at Winchester dealers Carter Marsh.
Timekeeper from Darwin’s Beagle voyage makes £60,000
18 July 2014The most historically interesting entry in Bonhams’ clock sale held in their New Bond Street rooms came from the ten-lot section devoted to marine chronometers.
Newly discovered ‘comet’ helps rare planetarium to £95,000
23 May 2014A rare late-18th century George Adams Junior combined planetarium and tellurian that sold at Bonhams includes a reference to the ‘Georgian Planet’ engraved on the top plate. Today that planet is better known as Uranus, which was first observed by William Herschel on March 13, 1781, although he initially recorded it as a comet.
London-made lathe takes $190,000 in Massachusetts
10 January 2013A rare Holtzapffel & Company rose engine lathe turned a few heads at Skinner’s recent Science, Technology and Clocks sale to take $190,000 (£124,185) as the top lot of the day.
A piece of history to raise the temperature
20 November 2012It had previously been thought that Daniel Fahrenheit only ever made two of the original mercury thermometers he invented in 1714, both of which are in the collection of the Museum Boerhaave, in Leiden in the Netherlands.
The world’s biggest binoculars?
18 July 2012What could well be the largest binoculars ever produced, this one-off commission was consigned to Cirencester auctioneers Moore Allen & Innocent following a house clearance in Cheltenham.
US bidder wins battle for £6900 stereoscope
25 May 2012This Victorian achromatic cabinet stereoscope was one of the more unusual offerings among the 540 lots offered at Dee Atkinson & Harrison’s recent sale at Driffield and proved the stand-out seller.
Not a flying saucer… but not far off
31 August 2010IT looks like a flying saucer, and to those viewing it on the monastery wall in Verona where it had hung since the Middle Ages, it can have had hardly less of an impact.
Van Leeuwenhoek microscope takes £260,000
08 May 2009HE had received only a basic education and spoke only Dutch, but Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) is today recognised as the greatest of the pioneering microscopists of the 17th century.
Canterbury Quadrant finds new home at BM
30 June 2008AN historic and important medieval scientific instrument, known as the Canterbury Quadrant, has been saved for the nation. St James’s specialist dealers Trevor Philip and Sons have sold the quadrant to the British Museum for £411,250.
Compass finds its way to £45,000
28 April 2005Christies South Kensington (20/12% buyer’s premium)ARGUABLY the strongest performance in the scientific instruments section of Christie’s South Kensington’s sale was provided by this pearwood table compass by John Harrison (1693-1776) pictured right.
Surgeon’s kit instrumental at Sandown
07 February 2005At Sandown Park Antiques Fair on February 15, Paul Braithwaite on stand HW5 is offering this early 20th century surgeons’ fitted box, made by Mayer & Meltzer, surgical instrument makers in London, for £385.
Too many tourists
01 September 2004HOW many dealers, I wonder, dread, rather than dream of, their business area being “discovered”? Long before Covent Garden became a trendy mecca for international tourists, one of the familiar attractions for habitués was London dealer Arthur Middleton’s distinctive shop in New Row, full of early globes and all sorts of antique scientific instruments.
Provenance and craftsmanship overcome risk of overexposure
10 August 2004AS its title suggests, the June 30 sale of scientific, medical and engineering works of art held by Christie’s South Kensington (19.5/12% buyer's premium) was something of a mixed bag. The 216-lot auction incorporated anything from 18th century microscopes and preserved amphibians to delft barbers’ bowls and scale models of locomotives.
Holding time in the palm of your hand
20 July 2004A Dial in your Poke by Mike Cowham, published privately. £29.50, plus p&p: UK £4.50, Europe £5.50, rest of the world including USA £10.00.
Binnacle bidders solve Enigma
19 May 2004MOVING just South of the Border to Jack Dudgeon (10% buyer's premium) in Berwick-Upon-Tweed, and echoes of one of the key incidents of the Second World War provided keen specialist interest at their April 19 sale.
The onward march of technology
28 April 2004Christie’s South Kensington (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) hold three Scientific Instruments sale a year but reserve the spring sale for a restricted number of high-quality objects. Tom Newth, head of the department, reports the market picking up in the last six months, with strong competition for microscopes and Islamic astronomical instruments.
An underrated library chair is a £5000 best seller
15 April 2004OF the 830 lots offered in Fieldings (12.5% buyer's premium) February 28 sale, a painting provided the highest price but a chair the biggest surprise.
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