Clocks, Watches & Jewellery

The market for traditional antiques ended 2015 on a high with a series of spectacular individual prices posted in London and New York in mid-December.

A 1940s Rolex wristwatch whose RAF owner was murdered by the SS after the Great Escape has sold for £165,000 in Buckinghamshire.

Dr John C Taylor, the horologist, inventor and clockmaker, has been given the Harrison Medal by the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers for his services to horology.

Police are appealing for help from the antiques trade to trace two men captured on CCTV at the scene of a watches burglary in London.

Berlin online auction house Auctionata set a house record when this Chinese enamel, ivory-mounted and paste-set musical and automaton clock was sold for €2.8m (£2.15m), or €3.37m including premium.

The law on tiger jewellery is frequently flouted. Last week on eBay – a site that operates a ban on antique ivory – several items of big cat jewellery were on sale from UK vendors.

Two lantern clocks engraved with the signature ‘Thomas Loomes at ye mermayd in Lothbury’ recently appeared at auction within days of each other.

What is billed as “the best collection of English clocks that has come to the market in living memory” will go on sale later this year at Winchester dealers Carter Marsh.

COMMENT – Dealer Jamie Sinai believes modern functionality will eventually lead to a celebration of creativity and individual flair

A significant reward is being offered for the recovery of 125 watches stolen from an antiques store in north London.

The Art Loss Register has launched a database dedicated to stolen watches, one they say can help anyone buying, selling or providing loans against second-hand wristwatches.

After lengthy and complex negotiations, the paper archive of the Staffordshire pottery firm of Minton’s has been saved for the nation.

Sotheby’s Geneva managed to grab the headlines when the Henry Graves Supercomplication set a record for a timepiece at auction.

Collector Robin Pinchbeck had never bought a clock before, but when he set his sights on the George I walnut-cased astronomical longcase on offer at Mitchells (17.5% buyer’s premium) of Cockermouth on September 11-12 he knew he simply had to have it.

This silver and labradorite floral necklace designed by Georg Jensen c.1915 sold for $17,000 (£10,970) at a recent auction held by Skinner of Boston.

Bonhams of Bond Street are to sell what is perhaps the most significant collection of cameos and intaglios seen on the market for decades.

Details have emerged of a theft of a significant collection of British pocket watches from a property in London earlier this year.

For some years now, Far Eastern buyers have been demonstrating their fascination with so-called ‘sing-songs’ – the elaborate 18th century automaton table clocks made for the Chinese market by paying ever-increasing sums to secure them.

The most historically interesting entry in Bonhams’ clock sale held in their New Bond Street rooms came from the ten-lot section devoted to marine chronometers.

A strong selection of Tudric (pewter) and Cymric (silver) creations by Archibald Knox for Liberty & Co was the focus of keen bidding at Bonhams’ decorative arts from 1860 sale in New Bond Street.