Displaying items by tag: silverware

A trove of Dutch Golden Age art stolen from a provincial Dutch museum nearly 11 years ago has been linked to a volunteer nationalist militia in Ukraine, the museum announced Monday.

The Westfries Museum in the northern town of Hoorn went public with claims that the 24 paintings snatched in a burglary on Jan. 9, 2005, along with 70 pieces of silverware are now being offered for sale in Ukraine, saying it wants to deter potential buyers.

The descendants of the goldfish glinting in the shady water, in a painting going on view at Sotheby’s auctioneers, are still swimming in the same pond today. The pond was dug by Winston Churchill at his beloved home, Chartwell in Kent, and the original fish were a present from Harrods.

His painting of the scene is one of the star items in an auction of personal possessions left by his last surviving child, Lady Mary Soames, who died last June aged 91.

together with furniture, jewelery, photographs, books – many signed by the authors – and silverware including the dishes which his budgie Toby was trained to march up and down the dinner table and serve salt from, is on public display at Sotheby’s in Bond Street from now until the auction next Wednesday, December 17.

A Renaissance silver-gilt and enamel salt cellar, bequeathed by collector Michael Wellby to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, has been identified as Nazi loot. It will thus be returned to the descendants of its pre-WWII owner.

The intricate piece is one of the 500 silverware items—believed to be worth in excess of £10 million—donated to the museum in 2012 by Wellby, a former friend of Professor Timothy Wilson, the museum's Keeper of Western Art.

Before her death in 2007, Brooke Astor was a fixture in New York City’s elite inner circle. A tireless philanthropist and champion of the arts, Astor left behind a legacy marked by kindness, generosity, and good taste.

Sotheby’s has announced an auction of the contents of two of Astor’s estates – her legendary Park Avenue duplex and her country estate, Holly Hill, in Briarcliff Manor, NY. A total of 901 items including European and Asian furnishings, Old Master paintings, Qing Dynasty paintings, tea sets, silverware, jewelry, a porcelain menagerie, and over 100 dog paintings will head to the auction block September 24–25. Per Astor’s request, proceeds from the sale will go to the institutions and causes she held dear including the New York Public Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Bronx Zoo, Central Park, the Animal Medical Center of New York, New York City’s public school system, and a number of charities in Maine. Sotheby’s expects the sale to bring in between $6 and $9 million for the entire collection.

An icon of New York society and refinement, Astor spent her final years suffering from dementia. After her death at 105, her estate remained in limbo due a family dispute that lasted five years. The feud ended in March of 2012 and $100 million of Astor’s estate was freed for her charities. The amount going to Anthony Marshall, her only son, was cut by more than half as he was convicted of taking advantage of his mother’s deteriorating mental state and altering her will to his advantage.

Among the most coveted of Astor’s pieces that will be headed to Sotheby’s are an Imperial Chinese gilt-bronze lion clock slated to bring in around $180,000–$220,000 and an emerald and diamond necklace with earrings estimated at $280,000– $390,000 for both.