Minoan lotus blossom stone bowl, estimated £12,000-17,000 at TimeLine on March 5.
Minoan bowl was owned by baron
A 3500-year-old Minoan lotus blossom stone bowl once owned by Colin Tennant, 3rd Baron Glenconner, is up for sale at TimeLine Auctions next month.
The bowl was in the private collection of Baron Glenconner, owner of the private island of Mustique and friend of Princess Margaret, until his death in 2010 and then by descent.
The auction house said it is accompanied by a handwritten note identifying who gave the bowl to him, believed to be a famous musician, which will be revealed to the eventual buyer of the bowl.
Estimated at £12,000- 17,000 at the March 5 sale, the (c.1700-1450BC) bowl has been authenticated by TimeLine and checked against the Interpol database for stolen works of art.
Gasketeers see light at end of the tunnel
Two dealers have declared a victory in their quest to save historic gas lamps in Westminster.
Tim Bryars and Luke Honey of The London Gasketeers, and working with the Victorian Society, have been campaigning to retain original gas lamps in central London.
Last week Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, Arts and Heritage Minister at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), announced the listing of four gas lamps in Covent Garden. The Grade II listing is a result of a pilot project by Historic England. Further listings are likely to follow.
The London Gasketeers said: “These are the first Westminster gas lamps to be listed in 40 years, a milestone in our grassroots campaign, and it provides a model for protecting the remaining handful of survivors.”
Read more about it here in ATG online.
Thieves target tribal art collection
Two of the 50 stolen objects from the Dartevelle family in Brussels.
Around 50 works of tribal art have been stolen in Belgium.
They were taken from the Dartevelle family in Brussels on January 25.
The items were part of the collection of respected African art dealer and gallery owner Pierre Dartevelle (1940-2022) who died in 2022. Many of them featured in his daughter Valérie Dartevelle’s book Pierre Dartevelle and Tribal Art.
Anyone with information should contact Brussels police and quote crime reference number BR17L4002330/2024.
Information can be reported online via a form at police.be
Cooper signs up in Channel Islands
Guy Cooper has joined Martel Maides.
Guy Cooper has joined Martel Maides Auctions in Guernsey as a fine art valuer and auctioneer. He has worked at Stair Sainty Gallery, Daniel Hunt Fine Art, as a researcher for the former director of the National Galleries of Scotland, with Sir Timothy Clifford and at Tennants Auctioneers where he was a picture specialist.
Cooper’s interests include pictures, Asian art, furniture, fine wine and whisky.
Anglo-Saxon coin hoard up for sale
A hoard of Anglo-Saxon pennies is coming up for sale at Noonans.
An impressive group of Anglo- Saxon pennies found by metal detectorists near Braintree in Essex will be offered in separate lots by Mayfair saleroom Noonans.
The group has an estimate of in excess of £180,000 on February 21. Two detectorists (who have been searching together for 20 years and previously only found low-value items) heard the signal from their detector and at just four inches down discovered a silver penny. They found a handful more in the area that day and later realised they were rare pennies of Harold II.
Over the next few days they returned and found around 70 more. They then returned at a later date and found another 70 coins. The coins, classed as Treasure under the 1996 Treasure Act, were processed and Colchester Museum and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge bought 16 between them, including two 11th century Byzantine examples. Following this, late last year, the rest of the coins were disclaimed and returned to the finders. The proceeds of the sales and auction will be shared between the two finders and the landowner.
It is thought that the hoard was buried in 1066 – within five years of all bar two of the coins being minted.
Noonans coin specialist Bradley Hopper said: “While the deposition of the Braintree Hoard might not relate directly to the events of 1066, the fact that it was never recovered surely did.”
Most read
The most clicked-on stories for week February 8-14 on antiquestradegazette.com
1 Dealers and auctioneers react after Sotheby’s changes to buyer’s and vendor’s fees
2 The extraordinary collection of George Withers
3 A Jaguar car and life-size coronation carriage replica lead auction of Netflix’s The Crown props
4 Stolen ancient bronze recovered 40 years later and returned to China
5 Rediscovered society portrait is among five lots to watch
In Numbers
500
A UK coin with a face value of £2 was knocked down for 500 times that amount at RWB Auctions of Wiltshire, achieving a hammer price of £1000 against an estimate of £600-800. The 2014 ‘mule’ coin – one using dies not intended to be paired – showed Field Marshal Kitchener on the obverse and Queen Elizabeth II on the reverse. The Royal Mint confirmed that the wrong obverse die was used during production.
