A collection of Chinese silver, including a tea service by the well-known silversmith Zeewu, sold for over £2,000 at the January sale at the Lincoln auction rooms. The collection, which had been brought in to the auction house during a free valuation day, was one of the highlights of the sale held at auctioneers Golding Young & Thos. Mawer on Wednesday (January 18).
Auctioneer John Leatt said: "We are delighted with the price achieved for this lot which had been collected by a relative of the vendor who was in China at the time. "Due to increased demand for such items, it received a lot of attention before sale day and was purchased by a number of English collectors and Continental buyers." Among the collection was a three-piece tea service made by the silversmith Zeewu and decorated with bamboo which made £1,150.
Elsewhere in the sale, there was a collection of over 100 lots of vintage Weights & Measures Equipment previously used by officers in the former HM Customs and Excise, now HM Revenue and Customs. This section commanded very strong interest for such a specialized area of collecting. Over half of the lots sold via the live webcast internet bidding. Over £5,000 was paid for the collection which included alcohol strength testers, saccarometers, barrel measures, ullage gauges, hydrometers, slide rules and other associated devices.
Meanwhile, a gentleman's
18 carat gold Omega Seamaster De Ville wristwatch and strap sold for £1,200 and a silver three-piece tea service, comprising of a bullet shaped teapot with ebonised handle, a two-handled sugar bowl and a cream jug, made in Dublin in 1969, sold for £650.
Among the bygones, a British Railways enamel sign for Leicester Central Station on a maroon background sold for £900, well above its £400 to £600 estimate and in the furniture section, a mid-19th century teak military chest with two short and three long drawers, which had an estimate of £200 to £300, sold for £550, The most unusual lot in the sale was a tin of coffee given by the Emperor of Ethiopia, Haille Selassie, to victims of the East Coast Flood on January 31, 1953. Mr Leatt said: "The tin was unopened with coffee still inside and made £22 on sale day. That is a very expensive tin of coffee when you think about it!" Hundreds of people lost their lives when floods hit the east coast of England in January 1953. High tides combined with severe storms in Europe caused the North Sea to flood up to two miles inland between the Tees and the Thames.
By the next morning, 307 people in coastal towns and villages had died in the disaster, 24,000 homes were damaged and more than 30,000 people were moved to safety. The next Fine Art and Collective sales will be held at the Grantham saleroom on Wednesday and Thursday, February 1 and 2 and at the Lincoln saleroom on Wednesday, February 15. There is also a sale of Market Gardening and Aquatics Bankruptcy Stock at Grantham on Saturday, February 11.
