Advisors to collectors of precious and fine art
“We have discovered the secret of life” was the almost bizarre announcement made in the Eagle pub in Cambridge on the 28th of February 1953 by Cavendish Laboratory scientist Francis Crick. He was, as we now know, referring to the discovery of the structure of DNA (the genetic code) by himself, and fellow scientist James Watson (who had also popped [...] Read More
I was captivated recently by this portrait entitled ‘Chinese Girl’ by the Siberian artist Vladimir Tretchikoff. It had been heavily promoted and was for sale by auction at Bonhams. It was the star of the show and sold for a whopping £982,000 (inc) nearly double it’s estimate. It produced probably one of the most iconic and recognisable prints of the [...] Read More
On a recent trip to the Jeffry Museum and the Whitechapel Art Gallery London, we noticed some strange sculpted mushrooms sitting on top of buildings in and around Kingsland Road, Old Street and the Hackney Road. None of us (and we all frequently travel to this area) had spotted them before and fascinated, we couldn’t resist getting the iPad out to [...] Read More
Sometimes researching pieces within our collections throws up some truly fascinating stories. They are engrossing and perhaps take up far too much of our time and this story is no exception. It relates to a portrait medallion by James Tassie of Admiral Sir John Lindsay (1737 – 1788), a British naval officer. His tours of duty took him to many [...] Read More
The July book auction at Dominic Winter’s rooms at South Cerney was given over to the second portion of the rare book collection consigned by the Birmingham Medical Institute. Most of the books and pamphlets were published proir to 1820 and were on medical topics. We received commissions from clients for a number of items and despatched our rare book [...] Read More
One of our specialists recently visited a client where an interesting story emerged. The conversation turned to the film world and eventually to “The Third Man” released in 1949 starring Orson Welles as Harry Lime. The screenplay was written by Graham Greene and the film became a bloc-buster. The theme music, played on a zither, became an international hit in [...] Read More
Alongside other commodities (notably oil and gold) silver has seen a steady rise again this month, unavoidably tempting dealers with ever-increasing overheads to liquidate their stock via the refineries. To me, this suggests that posterity will benefit from a higher density of fine quality antique silver compared to ‘ordinary’ quality stock, most of which will have been scrapped – just [...] Read More