Silver & Silver-plated items

The London Assay Office (LAO) is to launch a crackdown on what it says is a rise in illegal antique silver being offered for sale.

An Arctic Medal with a provenance indicating it was awarded to a member of the doomed Franklin Expedition which vanished searching for the elusive Northwest Passage has surfaced at a Surrey auction house.

More Channel Islands silver to add to over 250 pieces dispersed as part of the Paint collection at Martel Maides earlier this year came to auction recently.

For a relatively brief period during the 19th century, small silver boxes decorated with British landmarks found an eager following among the honeymooners and day-trippers of Georgian and Victorian England.

Modern designs are not yet booming in price and a mini-golden age remains something of a secret, but that could be about to change as the largest private collection of its kind goes on display in the US...

The sale of a comprehensive collection of Channel Islands silver in Guernsey provides a perfect opportunity to test the market temperature...

It is possible to have too much of a good thing in a narrow collecting market – a feature amplified when the leading player has left the field.

A recent silver sale at Woolley & Wallis in Salisbury included a cache of early spoons from the collection of David Constable. Each had been illustrated and discussed in his magnum opus, 'Silver Spoons of Britain', published in 2016.

The dual appeal of Maltese silver lies in both a sense of national pride and a very limited supply.

Estimated at £12,000-18,000, this impressive pair of Regency four-light candelabra dipped just under hopes to sell for £11,500 at Fellows in Birmingham.

The Canterbury Auction Galleries included this George IV silver vinaigrette by John Lawrence & Co, Birmingham, decorated with a view of St Peter’s Church, Brighton. It sold to an Australian internet bidder for £2300.

A fine pair of Victorian figural table salts in the form of sea maidens on the back of dolphins sold for £4900 (estimate £1500-2000) at Wootton Auction Rooms in Gloucestershire on October 17. Weighing 33oz, they carry marks for John Wilmin Figg, London 1841.

Sotheby’s From Earth To Fire sale in Bond Street on November 1 was topped by a kunstkammer object with a Rothschild provenance.

Overshadowed by the £130,000 Giacometti double-sided sketch (ATG No 2314), other pieces at Cheffins’ (23% buyer’s premium) sale at Cambridge on October 12 flourished under the banner of post-1880 design.