George Kidner

George Kidner Auctioneers and Valuers is to close following the retirement of its founder.

The annual Christmas Present sale held by George Kidner at their saleroom in Lymington included this French Art Deco ruby and diamond-set brooch or jabot pin.

Estimated at £10,000-15,000, this silver-gilt and ivory guilloché enamel desk clock by Carl Fabergé sold for £65,000 at George Kidner in Lymington, Hampshire.

This group of orders and medals were awarded to Sir William Smart KCB, a Naval Surgeon and latterly Honorary Physician to Queen Victoria.

Included in George Kidner’s sale in Lymington, Hampshire on January 10, is this 19th century Swiss enamelled musical bird box decorated with landscape scenes.

In 1963, the daring actions of a 15-strong band of small-time London criminals captivated the world’s media. In 2007, it seems the Great Train Robbery still has the capacity to seize headlines.

ON December 28, 1792 Anglo-Irish statesman, orator and philosopher Edmund Burke (1729-97) enacted the melodrama in Parliament that became known as the Dagger Scene.

SPECIALIST items took three of the top-selling lots at this George Kidner Hampshire sale on 9 July. One was a 1731 pocket globe by Richard Cushee, a land surveyor, map and globe maker known to have been apprenticed to John Sellers Sr, a leading figure in the London map trade at the time.

AUCTIONEER George Kidner admitted after this April 16 sale (15% buyer's premium) that he wished he’d been able to offer more of that currently under-regarded commodity, brown furniture, because while routine silver remains pretty dormant and there was little good jewellery to be found, good quality furniture, along with ceramics, was selling well, sometimes spectacularly so.

TWO LOTS were bid to £800 in the 150-lot book and map portion of this Hampshire sale on 6 February at George Kidner, which put them some way ahead of most others on the day.

A privately sourced collection of jewellery boosted this first dispersal of the year in these Hampshire rooms at George Kidner on 9 January – “the bulk of the rest of the material was just good stock pieces”, said auctioneer Andrew Reeves.