Silver & Silver-plated items

Pictured here are three highlight lots from recent sales held by Whittons (20% buyer’s premium) in Honiton, Devon.

A French three-colour gold snuff box was a highlight of the silver and vertu section of Lawrences (25% buyer’s premium) of Crewkerne’s recent winter sale.

Another auction where silver and objects of vertu were prominent was the fine art and antiques sale staged by Elstob (25% buyer’s premium).

Silverware was a major component of Bonhams’ (28/27/21/14.5% buyer’s premium) Knightsbridge auction titled The Connoisseur’s Library on February 13-14.

A temporary export block has been placed on Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Polar Medal in the hope a buyer in the UK can pay £1.7m.

A Venetian Old Master painting of St Roch attributed to the circle of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696- 1770) awoke from the slumber of a $600-900 estimate to hammer for $75,000 (£59,000).

A rare silver and turquoise tazza designed by Erik Magnussen (1884-1961) for the Gorham Manufacturing Company sold for $24,000 (£19,000) at Schwenke Auctioneers (29/27% buyer’s premium) in Woodbury, Connecticut.

The novelty silver mounted glass claret jugs made in the form of birds and animals in the later Victorian era by goldsmith firms such as Alexander Crichton and Sampson Mordan were very popular in the later part of the 19th century.

The earliest records of the silversmithing on the Tyne date from 1249.

A sterling silver scale model of the Lockheed TriStar aircraft was the top lot at Kinghams’ (25% buyer’s premium) Silver and Objects of Vertu sale in the Cotswolds.

This extraordinary Tiffany & Co. silver and mixed metal vase has many of the characteristics of the firm’s chief designer and director of its silver works, Edward Chandler Moore (1827-91).

Figural novelty silver-mounted glass claret jugs are a favourite collectable and some of the most popular examples are fashioned as animals.

The vast majority of Georgian-era Channel Islands silver baluster mugs are of a pint or half-pint capacity.

Single-owner collection forms biggest dispersal of mustard pots at auction for many years

By all accounts, the Bulgarian prince and later Tsar Ferdinand I was a passionate railway enthusiast.

The small German beakers known as monatsbecher (‘month beakers’) were made in sets of a dozen: one for each month of the year.

While mustard pots and caddy spoons made up much of the silver smallwork in Anderson & Garland’s (25% buyer’s premium) silver sale on November 28 (see ATG No 2619), it did also contain one notable example of a Dutch miniature.

Small is considered beautiful in many sectors but increasingly so when it comes to collecting traditional antiques with space often at a premium.