Silver & Silver-plated items

Spotlight on honours sold recently includes courageous lifesavers from civilian backgrounds.

A look ahead to auction house and dealer highlights this summer.

Highland Antiques brings a 19th century silver teapot from York to the second Pavilions of Harrogate Decorative Antiques & Fine Art Fair of the year.

Goldsmiths’ Company librarian Eleni Bide on commemorative hallmarks

Estimated at £120-150, this modest 7in (17cm) high Chinese export silver golfing trophy sold for £5500 at Bourne End Auction Rooms (17.5% buyer’s premium).

Translating simply as ‘a box with drawers’ but so much more exotic than that, a rare Spanish Renaissance caja con cajones was the outstanding lot at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood’s (25% buyer’s premium) quarterly fine art sale in Exeter.

This remarkable Baccarat tantalus in the form of an elephant and howdah sold at Can$120,000 (£75,000) at an auction in Victoria, British Columbia.

The latest design sale at Roseberys featured this Aesthetic movement silver and ivory claret or water jug designed by Christopher Dresser.

Alastair Gibson Auctions has secured a remarkable Chinese imperial object with a Second Opium War provenance for a sale in London in the summer.

This large oak Orientalist carving, 'Eastern Slave Girl', is by the Victorian woodcarver Thomas Henry Kendall.

The Islamic and Indian Art sale at Bonhams (27.5/25/20/14.5% buyer’s premium) on March 29 was topped by a diamond and emerald set gold pendant from the collection of Maharani Jindan Kaur (1817-63).

Knowledgeable bidders spot a design by Owen Jones on offer in North Yorkshire

Provenance adds cachet to a varied selection offered in regional sale after London first dibs

Appealing to a range of different types of collectors, particularly aficionados of sewing antiques, Victorian and Edwardian animal pin cushions have their own niche in the novelty silver field.

This 22oz George II serving dish by Paul de Lamerie (London 1747) was formerly part of the service commissioned by Admiral George Anson (1697-1762).

Estimated at £20,000-30,000, this cast of the Warwick vase by John Samuel Hunt, London 1845, sold for £32,000.

With more than 16,000 works on display, 'Art Treasures of Great Britain', held in a temporary iron-and-glass structure built in the Old Trafford area of Manchester in 1857, remains the largest art exhibition to be held in the UK.