NETFLIX’S star-studded film The Dig highlights the exciting discovery of a great Saxon treasure at Sutton Hoo in 1939. A few years earlier in 1932 Winchester had its own moment of excitement when excavation at Oliver s Battery unearthed one of Hampshire s finest Dark Age treasures, the Winchester hanging bowl. For many years it was held by the British Museum, but is now in the City Museum, Winchester. The full story of its discovery by a local archaeologist can be googled and read in a Hampshire Field Club journal, because virtually all its papers are now online. The bowl was found in the grave of a young man buried with a javelin and hunting sword and is decorated with red spirals and fittings in the form of aquatic birds. There are counterparts in seventh century Irish manuscripts. The archaeologist, W.J. Andrew, must have been delighted, but complained that the fabulous discovery has “almost completely obscured the original purpose of [the] tentative excavations”!
Earl of Leicester s 500-year-old £50 bronze ostrich sells for £1.8 million, surprising experts
The 500-year-old bird was only expected to fetch up to £120,000
The bronze ostrich sculpture sold at auction for £1,824,540 at Cheffins Fine Sale (Image: Cheffins/PA)
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A sculpture of an ostrich bought for £50 and eight shillings by the Earl of Leicester has surprised the experts by selling for more than 20 times the expected auction price.
Collectors often say that they only regret ‘the ones that got away’. That feeling of loss at having missed out on something is much the same whether one collects paintings, fossils, sculpture, ceramics or stamps. It only intensifies when the thing being collected is particularly hard to come by, but, conversely, can be relieved by the small triumph of acquiring something else that others have overlooked or not managed to secure. In my own case, these feelings are palpable in relation to (arguably) one of the most niche areas of collecting: bookplates. As a child, I was forever creating collections of things: coins, postcards, badges, stones and even novelty erasers. In adulthood this mindset of acquisition and organisation has been focused, outside my professional life as a museum curator and director, into an enthusiasm for the more specialised domain of bookplates, informed by my love of wood engraving and illustrated books.
A sculpture of an ostrich which once belonged to Horace Walpole in Twickenham has sold at auction for more than £1.8 million. The bronze bird was bought for 15 times its estimated value at the Cheffins Fine Sale in Cambridge on Thursday, 23 April. It went to a UK-based private buyer for £1,824,540, dwarfing the pre-sale estimate of £80,000 to £120,000, and setting a new house record for the auctioneers. The ostrich sculpture was at one point owned by Horace Walpole, son of former British prime minister Sir Robert Walpole, and held in his collection at Strawberry Hill House in Twickenham. It is believed to have been bought by Walpole between 1765 and 1766, having been created by Flemish sculptor Giambologna between the late 16th and early 17th century.
A sculpture of an ostrich which once belonged to Horace Walpole in Twickenham has sold at auction for more than £1.8 million. The bronze bird was bought for 15 times its estimated value at the Cheffins Fine Sale in Cambridge on Thursday, 23 April. It went to a UK-based private buyer for £1,824,540, dwarfing the pre-sale estimate of £80,000 to £120,000, and setting a new house record for the auctioneers. The ostrich sculpture was at one point owned by Horace Walpole, son of former British prime minister Sir Robert Walpole, and held in his collection at Strawberry Hill House in Twickenham. It is believed to have been bought by Walpole between 1765 and 1766, having been created by Flemish sculptor Giambologna between the late 16th and early 17th century.