Features

Stowmarket saleroom Bishop & Miller’s Military, Medals & Weapons auction on April 30 features items from a distinguished Victorian military family.

By 1941, wartime Britain was facing severe shortages of both the raw materials and the labour force needed to make clothing.

A car boot sale find 25 years ago has revealed how a luxury cruise liner was converted for transporting thousands of troops during the Second World War.

An early issue Queen’s Gallantry Medal was one of the highlights of the first militaria auction section at Elstob & Elstob (22% buyer’s premium).

The medal group of a colonel believed to be the most heavily decorated Military Police officer in the history of the corps sold for a mid-estimate £2400.

Major Henry Milligan of the Royal Army Medical Corps not only won a Military Cross for bravery in the First World War in 1917, but gained another one.

A number of key sales for dealers and collectors of antique silver were postponed earlier this year. However, plenty is on offer this month and with lockdown in England set to recede, April features a bumper crop

Georgian silver bow corkscrews by Dublin makers are rare beasts and appeal to both silver collectors and helixophiles.

A recent sale at Dawsons’ (23% buyer’s premium) sale in Maidenhead included two George IV tablewares by Edward Farrell chased and embossed with tavern scenes in the manner of Dutch genre painting.

A late 19th century christening bowl offered by Hampshire auction house Hannam’s (23% buyer’s premium) was admired both for its artistry and ownership history.

This Neo-classical silver tea service combines the talents of two giants of the Regency era.

This George III silver table snuff box by Phipps and Robinson, London 1814, is engraved to the cover with a plan of the battle of Talavera in the Peninsular War.

This Victorian silver and enamel cigarette box is decorated to the lid with humorous scene from John Surtees’ Jorrocks, Jaunts and Jollities.

The sale at Bellmans (22% buyer’s premium) in Wisborough Green, West Sussex, on March 8-11 included an example of Alexander Crichton’s famous walrus silver and glass claret jug.

Bolstered by a strong melt price of over £15 an ounce, domestic silver hollowwares and flatwares are selling strongly. However, it is the pieces of collectable value – novelties, provincial rarities and the work of the best Georgian, Regency and Victorian smiths – that continue to perform best in the market

Rolex made the reference 6150 Oyster Perpetual Explorer for around two years after the 1953 Everest expedition. It is believed that Tensing Norgay wore a prototype of the watch, the first Explorer model to have the Mercedes hands, while completing the ascent.

Auction houses are getting back to normal for this latest staging of the New York Asian art spotlight, although new import taxes are having an effect.

At the peak of his fame in the 1969, the Anglo-Italian jewellery designer Andrew Grima was invited by Omega to create what would become the About Time collection.

With classic watches usually priced in five or six figures, it is worth discovering the less well-known brands and especially those from the 1980s, says newly appointed Lyon & Turnbull specialist Sarah Fergusson

Introduced in 1960, the Bulova Accutron 214 was among the first commercially successful electronic watch.