LOST FOR FIFTY YEARS

Taranaki Daily News, 18 July 1933, Page 15

LOST FOR FIFTY YEARS

TWO FAMILY PORTRAITS. FOUND TN GOLD MELTER’S SHOP. How two miniature portraits valued by a distinguished Spanish family were romantically traced after being lost for 50 years was told in London lately by England’s only woman gold-smelter. Mrs. Sonia Maidman, of Paddington, London, melts more than £2OO worth of gold every day, and this, she said, was just one of the adventures that regularly come her way. “A woman had come into my shop and sold me the miniatures, which were understood to be of an unknown person,” Mrs. Waldman said. “A few days later the Countess de Rodrickez, a well-known Spanish noblewoman, was glancing round the odds and ends here and. stopped at them in amazement. ‘That is my grandmother!’ she exclaimed as she came to the mysterious miniatures.”

The portraits had been missing from her family for 50 years. “You wouldn’t think there was much romance wrapped up in this little place, but, believe me, there certainly is!” said Mrs. Waldman. “At the time of the gold rush I was so inundated with people anxious to sell their gold that I could not get it all melted in time. I started to melt it myself, and have been doing so ever since.” Many choice pieces of jewellery have passed through Mrs. Waldman’s hands, including many of the late Tsar’s crown jewels. Many pieces have been so beautiful that she has not had the heart to melt them. Mrs. Waldman is one of the three principal woman jewel experts in Britain.