ENGLAND'S MOST WANTED:

Antiques Roadshow discovery shocks owner and expert alike (Roya Nikkhah, 05 Jun 2011, The Telegraph)

When Jill Cousins tuned in to a recent episode of the programme, she could scarcely believe her eyes when Geoffrey Munn, one of the show's jewellery experts, held up a series of watercolour sketches of jewellery designs by William Burges, the Victorian architect and designer who created Cardiff Castle.

Mr Munn announced that the six brooches in the designs were his "most wanted" items in the world, for which he had been searching for more than 20 years.

But as there was no evidence to suggest that they had ever even been made, with jewellery by Burges extremely rare, he felt sure that he would never see any of the brooches in the sketches, which are held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Mrs Cousins raced upstairs to the jewellery box on her dressing table, to inspect a broken silver brooch, set with a heart-shaped garnet and turquoises fashioned as forget-me-nots that had lain neglected at the bottom of her jewellery box, and her mother's before her, for more than 40 years.

When she realised that the brooch matched the sketches that Mr Munn had shown on the Antiques Roadshow, she was stunned.

Posted by oj at June 5, 2011 9:00 AM
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