Our Fine Jewellery & Watches auction on November 30 includes a metamorphic desk seal once belonging to Lady Sophia Macnamara (nee Hare) (1836-1912). The fifth child and fourth daughter of the 1st Earl of Listowe, Lady Sophia married Arthur Macnamara at Ballyhoole, Cork in 1854 and later settled in Hertfordshire becoming a lady in waiting to Princess Louise (later Duchess of Argyll).
9 November 2021
The seal, fashioned in 15ct gold with a carved white agate pommel handle, was made around 1860 when Lady Sophia and her husband Arthur Macnamara settled in Flamstead.
Lot 45 | A ladies' gold metamorphic desk seal, c.1860
Estimate £2,000-3,000
When ‘closed’ a bloodstone matrix with the family seal (the arms of Macnamara impaling Hare) is visible. However, a hinged base opens to reveal a smaller cornelian matrix engraved with a monogram and a third banded agate intaglio engraved with the name Sophia. It comes for sale with an estimate of £2,000-3,000 from the collection of the late Peter Crofts (1924-2001), a Cambridgeshire antiques dealer whose own story was extraordinary.
After schooling at Wisbech grammar, Peter Crofts, the scion of a local farming family, had volunteered to serve in the Fleet Air Army and subsequently went to the US to train as a pilot. Tragically, on March 25, 1945, a month and a day before his 21st birthday, the engine of his Corsair F4U burst into flames during take-off at US Naval Hospital in Jacksonville, Florida. Both his legs were amputated and he had spent three and a half years recovering in hospital.
It was under the guidance of the Stamford dealer Major Bernard Edinburgh that he became an antiques dealer and by 1958 was elected a member of the British Antique Dealers Association. Despite his disability, he was a keen sailor, owning an 88-year-old clinker-built Norfolk beach boat.
Few figures in the art and antiques world have shaped taste and defied convention quite like Ken Bolan. From the glamour of continental showrooms to the quiet beauty of rewilded West Country landscapes, Ken’s journey has been one of bold vision and creative instinct. This landmark sale, to be held on Wednesday 24 September, opens a window into that world – a personal collection amassed over five decades, filled with sculpture, furniture, and design with soul and story.
7 July 2025
A major highlight of our forthcoming 'DREAMS | A Unique Private Collection' sale on 9 July is a remarkable archive of letters and manuscripts by John Ruskin (1819–1900), the celebrated Victorian polymath. This unparalleled group – numbering in the hundreds – is believed to be the largest collection of Ruskin correspondence in private hands and spans a vast range of topics from art and architecture to politics, religion, and personal reflection.
2 July 2025
'The Scented Garden of Abdullah the Satirist of Shiraz' - also known as 'The Bagh-i-Muattar' - quickly caught the attention of our book specialists, when a copy bound in full vellum was brought in by a local client to our weekly valuation day.
2 July 2025