Silver & Silver-plated items

Among the works sold over estimate at today’s silver and jewellery auction at Sworders in Stansted Mountfitchet was a rare silver-gilt three-piece teaset that tripled expectations when it was knocked down at £4100.

Catalogued as white metal, with no hallmarks, a snuff box included in the silver section at Adam Partridge’s recent sale at Macclesfield caused a stir. The mark it did have was that of the great Huguenot maker, David Willaume.

Silver collector, expert and author David Constable has had a love affair with spoons since he began collecting in earnest in 1997.

This 18½in (47cm) George II silver soup tureen by the goldsmith Paul de Lamerie featured in Doyle’s latest sale of furniture, works of art and Old Master paintings in New York.

The highlight of Bonhams’ latest sale of Islamic and Indian art in London was this rare Gujarati mother-of-pearl artwork of early date and exceptional size.

The collection of medals awarded to Ernest Shackleton, the most decorated of the Polar explorers, excelled at a recent Christie’s South Kensington sale.

The perpetrator of a chilling raid on an antiques shop in Honiton more than a year ago has been jailed.

A silver medal awarded to a lifeboatman who rescued sailors from a sinking ship in hurricane-force winds off the Kent coast in 1891 is to be sold at Canterbury Auction Galleries.

This rare Irish provincial silver punch strainer took £14,000 at Lawrences’ latest sale in Crewkerne. Dated to c.1740-60, it is struck twice for Joseph Johns, one of only a handful of silversmiths working in Limerick in the middle of the 18th century.

This 5in (12cm) high pair of Victorian salts in the form of kangaroos made by Bond Street silversmiths Hunt & Roskell sold for £18,000 at Catherine Southon’s latest sale at Farleigh Court Golf Club near East Croydon.

This Tiffany Studios c.1905 table lamp proved the highlight of Denhams’ recent fine art sale in Horsham, Sussex. It was an unusual visitor to the UK regional saleroom.

Sales of coins and medals at UK auctions have doubled in value over the past decade to £44.7m.

James Watson’s 1962 award for his work on DNA set a world record price for a Nobel Prize Medal at Christie’s in New York when it sold for $4.1m (£2.6m) hammer.

Christie’s New York are offering the 1962 Nobel Prize gold medal awarded to Dr James D. Watson, one of the world’s greatest living scientists.

A possibly unique electroplated coffee pot, designed by Christopher Dresser (1834-1904) and made by James Dixon & Sons in Sheffield, proved the highlight of Lyon & Turnbull’s sale auction ‘Decorative Arts: Design from 1860’ when it was knocked down for £80,000.

This Fabergé enamelled silver and hardstone cigarette box sold for £46,500 at the latest sale held at Nicholas Mellors of Newark.

The quarterly auction of silver and plated wares held by Fellows in the Birmingham Jewellery Quarter on September 22 included a family collection of eight apostle spoons formed several generations ago.

The Christopher Foley collection of British commemorative medals will be sold at Salisbury auctioneers Woolley & Wallis on October 16. The sale is the most comprehensive of its type seen for a century or more.

It’s only recently in the decade-long boom in Chinese works of art that Far Eastern buyers have come to appreciate once again the merits of Export silver. Once a neglected area, academic interest has been piqued in the subject as the marketplace moves in leaps and bounds.

Discovered at a regional valuation day held in Shropshire by Hansons of Etwall, this Tiffany and Co. silver and mixed-media tea caddy had been a wedding gift and had remained in the family of the vendor since the 1920s.