5 minute read
Arts & Antiques
Mendip expert’s choice –a snake of love and wisdom
EACH month, a member of the Killens team based at the Mendip Auction Rooms will do an “Expert’s Choice” detailing an item that they like which has been recently sold or is in a future auction. This month, Steven Ferguson, senior valuer at the auction rooms, gives his opinion.
Steven covers all aspects of antique valuations and his specialty is jewellery and silver. He is a graduate gemmologist with The Gemmological Institute of America and often sees jewellery from 16th century Renaissance pieces to 1970s designers such as John Donald and Andrew Grimma.
Our next Antiques Jewellery and Collectibles auction takes place on Saturday, November 6th and Steven has chosen his favourite item as Lot 85. He states: “It is an early Victorian gold and garnet serpent necklace circa 1850.
“The head is set with a large red garnet cabochon and it has ruby eyes on a highly articulated snake link chain necklace, the clasp secured in the jaws of the snake with a heart shaped garnet cabochon set memorial pendant with quartz crystal back and is even in its own original red leather fitted box.
“In Victorian jewellery the snake symbolised eternal love and wisdom and it is still a sought after item in the modern auction market with an estimate of £300-£500.”
Valuations can be undertaken on a drop-in basis at the auction rooms between 10am and 3pm each weekday and Killens have professional valuers and experts on hand to advise. Alternatively, valuers are able to conduct free home visits.
Contact the team at Killens on 01749 840770 or email enquiries@mendipauctionrooms.co.uk for further assistance
How Weymouth became Bath with some help from France
THAT domestic goddess of the Victorian era, Mrs Beeton, claimed all creatures eat, but “man only dines”. If she was still with us, Mrs B. would surely be aghast to learn that the dining room is fast going the way of the dodo. With today’s taste for informality in all things, the room that was once the very definition of middle class respectability has been brought to the brink of obsolescence by kitchen suppers and take-aways in front of the telly.
Before you drown in grief, let’s not forget that what, how and where we consume our food has always been subject to the vagaries of fashion.
Around 10,000 B.C. the happy Homo Sapiens of Cheddar caves washed down their meals - usually animal, occasionally human - with the Stone Age equivalent of Chateauneuf du Pape from a human skull passed from person to person (archaeologists have yet to discover whether “pinkies” were raised).
The etiquette of Georgian dining demanded a myriad of plates, tureens and dishes to provide the necessary wow factor to impress your guests. Your dinner service said a lot about who you were or who you wanted to be, as events at Longleat in 1789 show.
In that year, George III announced he was coming to stay and bringing 100 people with him. Lord Weymouth, Longleat’s owner, went into overdrive preparing for the visit and bought a dinner service from Europe’s most With CHRIS YEO fashionable pottery. The Sevres factory had been founded just outside Paris in 1740 and quickly became the go-to place for porcelain of the highest quality, attracting the likes of King Louis XIV and his queen Marie Antoinette. What better way for Lord Weymouth to impress the King than with a huge dinner service from this most regal of makers? The service he ordered was delicately hand-painted with tiny flowers – no two pieces were alike. Was the King impressed? No. He said, as a German he would have much preferred to have eaten his dinner from a Meissen plate but he did reward Lord Weymouth with a title, making him Marquess of Bath. A plate from this service recently appeared at auction and made a very tasty £2,000.
Sevres soup plate
Miner’s artwork for sale
PAINTINGSand other art work by the late Robert Bailey of Pensford, will be sold at the annual Christmas Market on Saturday, December 4th at All Saints Church in Publow, 10am-12.30pm. One of the local Sidmouth in Devon history group, Lyndsay Cooper, said: “Robert, who ran Pensford Evergreen Club for many years along with his late wife Margaret, was an accomplished artist in his own right and this is your chance to own a very special piece of his artwork.”
The former miner and historian, who died in 2019, left a vast collection of slides and photographs which his family has donated to the society, which is digitising them.
Proceeds will go to All Saints’ Church and the history group.
Details: http://www.publow-with-pensfordpc.gov.uk/wp-content/PDF/bailey_catalogue.pdf pensfordhistorygroup@gmail.com
We’ve got it covered
Mendip Times Distribution Points
Mendip Times is available from over 900 outlets across the Mendips from superstores to village stores and post offices, farm shops, supermarkets, garden centres, pubs, inns, hotels and restaurants, doctors’ surgeries, libraries and tourist information centres.
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Art on show
Mary Griese
DOZENS of artists and crafts people opened up their homes and studios for this year’s Chew Valley Arts Trail.
Local author Mary Griese is pictured at her Fairseat workshop in Chew Stoke with some of her paintings of agricultural and rustic scenes. Full story P50.
