Auctioneers

An intriguing Jacobite relic was sold at a recent Mellors & Kirk (24% buyer’s premium) auction in Nottingham.

Benedetto Pistrucci (1783-1855), who worked as chief engraver and chief medallist to the Royal Mint, had two daughters who he trained in gem engraving.

With so much gold and silver jewellery heading for the melting pot in recent months, Spicers (20% buyer’s premium) in Old Goole, East Yorkshire, was pleasantly surprised by the performance of this tiny 0.7g 9ct gold and enamel charm.

Rare family tree drawing by the 18th-century artist, magician, musician and showman comes to auction

Pupils came to a south London auction house as part of a scheme taking place for the third time.

While the Cheffins auction featured the original drawing for the Duke of Wellington’s funeral carriage (see main Art Market story in this edition), the funeral of another British hero of the Napoleonic wars was in the spotlight in a London sale.

Founded in Spain in 1875 by brothers Fernand, Jules, Léopold and Jacques, Lacloche Frères became one of the great French jewellers of the Art Deco period.

The artist Jean-Michel Moreau the younger (1741-1814) was employed from the 1780s onwards as a dessinateur des Menus-Plaisirs.

London dealer Liliane Fawcett, who since 1984 has traded from Notting Hill as Themes and Variations, began acquiring Italian post-war glass just as the secondary market was forming.

Perth saleroom Lindsay Burns (22% buyer’s premium) posted a new house record with an exceptional piece of period jewellery at its latest three-day sale.

Interest in glyphic art, that reached its collecting apogee during Grand Tour collecting, is resurgent once more.

The grim mortality rate of 17th century Britain precipitated a taste for memento mori jewellery that reached its height of popularity in the early 1700s.

Sotheby’s Hong Kong’s Asian Art Week was led by the earliest extant court painting by the Italian Jesuit painter Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766).

Portraits of the third and fourth prime ministers of Great Britain are among the highlights of a fine collection of British portraiture that comes for sale at Sworders on May 19.