Burstow & Hewett's Outstanding 2024: A Year in Review

Our monthly Luxury Watches, Fine Jewellery & Silver auction has rapidly become our biggest and most successful sales and its all down to our in-house gemmologist Will Ellin FDA DGA! This year he launched our first Fine & Exceptional Jewellery sale with great success. Just some of the highlights include A Sri Lankan No Heat Sapphire and Diamond Ring which sold for £10,000 and a CHRISTIAN DIOR - An Aquamarine and Enamel 'Diorette' Ring that fetched £6,000 when it went under the hammer!

Take a look at some more highlights from our Luxury Watches, Fine Jewellery & Silver auction including a ROLEX - Oyster Perpetual Submariner 'James Bond' watch that made £15,000 when it was sold in our November auction

We have hundreds of paintings, sculptures and prints come through our saleroom every month and sometimes they take us by surprise! In August, a Friedrich Nerly oil on canvas of a Venice funeral gondola that we estimated at £1,000-£2,000 made ten times that when the hammer eventually fell at £11,500.

In July, we had our Valuation Road Trip in Rye where we acquired 3 Japanese colour woodblock prints to sell on behalf of a local gentleman. We later discovered that they were signed by Hasui Kawase, originally concealed by the frames, they ultimately ended up making £15,000! One very happy vendor!

Take a look at some more highlights from the year below:

Our Fine Antiques 2024 debut in February was headlined by an extraordinary piece of women’s rights history—a “Votes for Women” Suffragette sash that sold for an impressive £4,200.

Then in April, the excitement continued with a legendary slice of rock music history: a complete set of autographs from every member of The Beatles, which struck a chord with bidders and achieved a fantastic £2,700.

Our Fine Antiques sales always feature something for every collector, see below for some of the other highlights:

We'd thought we'd lost our marbles when a group lot containing some rare marbles sold for £2,800! 

And our jaws dropped when a set of Great White shark jaws sold for £1,950.

Got an old vinyl collection at home? It could be worth more than you think! A collection we sold recently sold for £2,500.

Check out some of the other interesting lots that we've had come through the Granary Saleroom doors below:

Our bi-monthly 20th Century Design auctions always feature a stylish array of classic mid-century design. From furniture to studio pottery there's always something to jazz up your interiors. A few of the hammer highlights are below such as the March edition where we sold The Mitch Mitchell collection including JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE a GOLD DISC presented to MITCH MITCHELL to Commemorate The Sale of More Than 500,000 Copies Sold of the 1968 Album 'Electric Ladyland' which sold for £2,300

In March we launched our first ever Science, Natural History & Curiosities auction with over 500 meticulously curated lots ranging from the quirky to the macabre, the auction was a captivating journey into the unusual.

One of the standout features of the auction was the Scientific Collection and Library of George West, a lecturer and assistant to the Professor of Botany at University College Dundee, dating back to approximately 1910. This remarkable collection included rare entomology books, microscopes, and cabinets filled with geological microscope slides and a A Victorian mahogany microscope slide collectors cabinet which sold for £5,200.

Take a look at more of the weird but wonderful hammer highlights below:

2024 also saw the introduction of our first Garden & Outdoors sale curated by Dan & Breccan at The Granary Saleroom. The sale featured everything you could possibly need to style your outdoor space from garden urns to arbours.

See below for some of the highlights: