A RARE gold medal discovered by a jeweller is going under the hammer.
The 20ct gold Life Saving Medal made by Tiffany & Co was uncovered in a pile of old gold by a jeweller in Old Swan.
Peter Edwards, of WJ Edwards on Prescot Road, found the rare medal in a leather pouch amongst broken gold jewellery.
After much research, he discovered the medal had been awarded to Alfred N Beavan, the captain of the steamship ‘Birka’ which sailed from Liverpool in 1911.
The medal was presented after Beavan rescued three seamen from their sinking ship ‘Theresa’ which was found in heavy seas 120 miles off St Michael’s in the Azores.
The seamen from Spain had set sail to fish off the North West coast of Africa but they arrived as shipwrecked mariners in New York onboard the Birka on 2 August 1911.
Peter Edwards, who runs the family business with his sister Margot Walker, said:“We found it in an assortment of old gold that we were going to get rid off, we spotted the leather pouch and couldn’t believe it when we looked inside.
“The pouch has protected the coin so it was perfectly preserved, we spotted it was by Tiffany & Co the old jewellers and I started searching on the internet. I contacted the Life Saving Benevolent Association of New York but it’s now the Seaman’s Mission and it was through them that we learned the medal had quite a history to it. It dates back to August 1911 which was a year before the famous Titanic sunk in 1912.”
The medal, designed by CH Lovett, is up for auction at Birmingham’s Fellows & Sons and is expected to fetch between £2,000-3,000.
It will be sold alongside an account of the rescue in the New York Times.
Stephen Whittaker, managing partner, Fellows & Sons, said: “This medal is unique and carries an interesting history. Currently there is a tendency for jewellers to scrap gold but I am delighted they spotted the potential interest of this medal for collectors both in the UK and the USA.”
How the medal ended up back in a jewellers in Liverpool is a mystery but Mr Edwards thinks the medal was pledged at his family’s pawnbrokers.
His family business dates back three generations, but Mr Edwards said the medal was the greatest find he knew of.
He added: “We get all sorts handed in, bits of old gold among false legs, pocket watches and compasses. Liverpool’s strong maritime history means we get a lot of navigation aids but we’ve never had a medal like this.”
To added bless their 10th anniversary, SOPH. accompany up with addition outstanding partner; Tiffany & Co. to actualize a section of adornment that combines the two collaborators accomplished talents. Quality argent alloyed with avant-garde branding of that which is SOPH.If you’re apprehensive what it in fact is…”it’s a key holder. You alleviate the brawl on the end of the U shaped capital allotment and accelerate keys assimilate it……..it’s a allowance as allotment of the advancing 10 year Soph anniversary….”
New York–TAG Heuer and Tiffany and Co. top the watch and adornment categories, respectively, in a new abstraction that measures affluence brands on their agenda competence.
The “Digital IQ” baronial arrangement acclimated to admeasurement agenda adequacy was advised by the L2 Affluence Lab of the New York University (NYU) Stern School of Business. In accession to watches and jewelry, the abstraction covers brands in the afterward categories: automobiles, adorableness and skincare, acclaim cards, cruises and tours, electronics, fashion, architecture and home, hotels, and wines and champagnes.
A absolute of 109 brands were ranked and accustomed a “Digital IQ” based aloft their seek engine optimization; cast translation–the aesthetics of their agenda media, as able-bodied as their messaging and conveyance of their ancestry and accumulated citizenship; leveraging the medium–their use of technology, interactivity and capability of their user interface; and finally, their use of amusing media.
The goal, according to Affluence Lab architect Scott Galloway, a analytic accessory assistant at the Stern School of Business, is to “provide a able-bodied apparatus that diagnoses agenda strengths and weaknesses, allowance companies accomplish greater acknowledgment on incremental investment.”
The top eight brands ranked in the abstraction anniversary accustomed Agenda IQs aloft 140, casual them into the “Genius” class, acceptation that agenda adequacy is a aggressive advantage for the brands and that their sites are seek optimized, aesthetically engaging, anatomic and interactive. In addition, the brands are experimenting, innovating and agreeable users on amusing media platforms and adaptable devices.
TAG Heuer was the alone watch or adornment cast to rank in the Genius category, sliding in at the eighth atom with a annual of 141. The abstraction declared the Swiss watch cast by adage that “great seek enhancement and anxious user interface lift TAG Heuer over mega-brand Rolex.”
The brands that baffled TAG cover Apple, ranked at No. 1 with a annual of 170, followed by BMW, Audi, Sony, Porsche, Louis Vuitton and Ralph Lauren.
Tiffany and Co., the astral adornment aggregation at No. 13, accustomed a Agenda IQ of 129, agreement it in the “Gifted” class. The abstraction alleged out Tiffany’s “elegant e-commerce belvedere and visually aggressive artefact search” as allowance the cast attain the top baronial a part of adornment brands.
Companies in the Gifted chic accustomed array amid 110 and 140, with the appellation acceptation that the brands’ sites are crawlable, brand-enhancing and about e-commerce enabled, and that the brands are aswell experimenting with a array of Web applications.
Rolex fell into this category, baronial 13th, as did Swarovski at 21 and Cartier at 22.
Of the watch and adornment brands falling into the “Average” class, scoring amid 90 and 110 on the Agenda IQ meter, were Chopard, Hublot, Movado, Van Cleef and Arpels, Omega, Bulgari and Piaget.
Brands in this chic affection sites that are anatomic but predictable, with bare accession and Web efforts that are not a point of aggressive differentiation, the abstraction said.
Next up are brands in the “Challenged” class, acceptation that their Web sites are aesthetically adorable but generally ailing accommodate the acquirement and artefact experience, and affection bound assurance above the capital Web site.
IWC ranked at the top end of this class, in the 72nd spot, with Baccarat at the low end, baronial 94th. Watch and adornment brands baronial in amid included Audemars Piguet, Patek Philippe, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Vacheron Constantin, Harry Winston, David Yurman and De Beers.
Finally, brands baronial as “Feeble,” scoring beneath 70 on the Agenda IQ scale, included Buccellati, Franck Muller, Graff, Bulova and Faberge. According to the study, brands falling into this chic do not authenticate charge to the requisite assets the cast and befalling warrants.
Looking added carefully at the watch and adornment categories, the abstraction finds that abounding of the brands that characterization themselves as “exclusive affluence brands” accept Agenda IQs that are on boilerplate 17 credibility beneath “mass bazaar affluence brands.” Abounding of the college price-point brands–most accepted in the watch, adornment and appearance categories–have “visually beauteous sites but attempt to absorb seek engine enhancement or an automatic user interface,” the abstraction explains.
In the watch category, TAG was the alone cast to cover links to accustomed retailers on the Web. In addition, with the barring of TAG, Rolex, Hublot and Movado, the sites of added watch brands analyzed in the abstraction crave three to six clicks to cross from the artefact affectation page to retail area information.
The abstraction gives the watch chic props, though, in agreement of amusing media. Findings acknowledge that watch brands accept added attendance on amusing media platforms than a lot of affluence brands.
As for jewelry, the abstraction calls the chic out as accepting the greatest amount of players beneath the “Challenged” and “Feeble” classes, with anemic traffic, poor user interfaces and bound use of amusing media arch to low Agenda IQs.
None of the adornment brands analyzed in the adornment chic affection a YouTube channel, the abstraction found; David Yurman is the alone cast boasting a Twitter annual with a bashful amount of followers; and Cartier and Tiffany are the alone brands with a cogent amount of admirers on Facebook.
What and who: The Queen is Dead, Long Live the Queen, by Octavia Cook
Where and when: Anna Miles Gallery, 4J, Canterbury Arcade, to October 31
I’m killing off Cook & Co,” says jeweller Octavia Cook. That’s not definite, appropriately the appellation of the show. Cook added the “& Co” tag at her aboriginal appearance at Anna Miles in 2005, allotment of the action of staking out area in the apple of art.
“It was built-in of a charge to accomplish added than just jewellery. It brings my ancestors into it. It started off as my adaptation of Tiffany & Co, a humble, basic version, but it has developed and broadcast with every show,” she says.
Two photographs fabricated to accompany specific works appearance Cook acrimonious up on the achievement aspect of cutting an clear section of jewellery and axis it into achievement art.
In one, she is built-in in a armchair in the bend of her parents’ Pakuranga active room, which has been aggrandized by items like aristocratic portraits added to things Cook grew up with.
A photo aural the photo shows the autogenous of a maharajah’s alcazar with an octagonal table with a mirror top, the archetypal for the table Cook’s pieces are displayed on.
“Mine is added a customised barbecue table,” she says, acrimonious up the affair of the adumbral accessory with aspirations to grandeur.
The added photo has Cook sitting in a attenuated book-lined aisle at her husband’s workplace. “I like the theatricality of it. It references portraits of genteel folk in their home library after getting my own home or a genteel library.”
While staged, the photos are beneath apish than agnate creations for a appearance two years ago. “There was added of a affectation in those [earlier] photos. Now Octavia Cook is added in band with Cook & Co.
“It acclimated to be I was added separated. I’m absolution the bouncer down a little bit.
“Just afore aperture I acquainted afraid about how accessible it was. I mean, that’s my parents’ active room. I grew up in that house. I’m an Eastie!”
The brooch she wears in the library includes a ample circuitous of the Taj Mahal with a bead chaplet adornment below. The adornment inserts Cook’s contour on to a Lady Di contour with the pie band collar and billowing hair.
The millefiori address acclimated to actualize the Taj Mahal out of debris of acrylic set in adhesive is aswell acclimated for a brace of earrings featuring “the affiliated home and garage”.
“I acquainted the charge to antithesis out the amplitude of the Taj Mahal with my parents’ house,” Cook says. “They are both memorials in some way.”
A plate-size brooch, the one she is cutting in the Pakuranga photo, is a array of white on white cameos of her adapt egos: as Captain Cook, a sharina, a tsarina, a maharaja.
A medium-sized adaptation is done atramentous on black, keepsake mori style. Then there’s the aeroembolism “micro-dynasty” version, a baby argent brooch in an copy of three. A jointed brooch is based on Mexican cardboard cut outs done for the day of the dead. The endure plan is a chaplet fabricated to attending like a alternation of affiliated cigarettes captivation up an ashtray, a smouldering commemorative souvenir.
The new Tiffany & Co. store at University Village is opening today, Friday, Sept. 4 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 10 a.m., followed by an open house with Tiffany executives.
I was given a sneak peek of the store on Wednesday and was flattered to be invited to a cocktail party Thursday night for members of the media and VIP shoppers. The store doesn’t disappoint, with stunning decor that perfectly complements the gorgeous Tiffany jewelry on display.
I brought my mom to the event, and as we were parking she wondered aloud whether anyone is really shopping for high-ticket jewelry and questioned how well Tiffany would do at University Village.
I didn’t say anything at the time, because I knew that once she stepped foot into the store, she would fall under the spell of the new Tiffany concept.
What they’ve done right is taken their jewelry out of the cases and put it into the hands of women, most of whom can’t resist the bling. Additionally, as I mentioned in my Daily Find about the store, Tiffany has balanced their higher-ticket items with more affordable pieces, making it possible for many more shoppers to consider making a purchase there. The thing about a Tiffany piece is that it’s bound to be passed on from generation to generation. Plus, they’ve got such a huge inventory, there’s something there for everyone.
Sure enough, guess who walked out of the store with a brand new sterling silver Tiffany Key around her neck? That’s right, my mom. Bless her heart, my mom is a consummate shopper and a great bellwether for how well Tiffany will fare at University Village.