02December2023

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Impact of the Decision To Leave the EU

Impact of the Decision To Leave the EU

It is now clear that the British people have made the choice to leave the European Union. The countr...


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Buddhist Garden Treasure Sells for Over Half a Million Pounds - Philip Voice

Have you got any old carved stone statuary or ornate metalwork adorning your garden? You might want to take a closer look if you have, because you never know, you may just be sitting on a small fortune. Bronwyn Hickmott, of Exeter in Devon, recently used a semi-circular carved stone as a door step until it was identified as a rare Buddhist treasure. 

Bonhams experts identified the stone as a step was in fact a Sri Lankan Temple Moonstone (Sandakada pahana) of the late Anuradhapura Period, 10th or early 11th Century.

Bonhams described the stone:

of semi-circular form, depicting a series of carved bands containing from outer edge, a band of forked tongues representing fire, a repeating band of animals representing the four corners of the earth - the elephant, the horse, the lion and the bull, a band containing a raised and delicately carved wavy vine on a dense bed of curling leafs, a band of swans plucking vegetation, the far left swan with head turned away and facing a three-tiered votive or vase and the far right swan with its head raised, a band of water lily petals their ends curled upwards and to centre a half lotus flower 246cm x 123cm; 14cm thick at widest point

The stone was expected to fetch £30,000 but bidding eventually sold for £553,250 at London, New Bond Street auction house.

After starting my garden maintenance and landscaping business in 1984 and running it for 21 years I decided I needed a change of direction (probably a mid life crisis, no seriously! :-0) Together with my family, wife Donna, Son Henry and Daughter Fleur (not forgetting Hector the Black Labrador) I moved to France in search of an old farmhouse to renovate. In the interim period whilst waiting for the contract to go through I started writing a blog. Initially just to keep a diary for family and friends to keep up with our progress if they wished but then it occurred to me that there isn't a real time watcher of the landscape industry in the UK. I didn't want to waste my experience and experiences so I decided I could put all of this Juice to good use so I started Landscape Juice.

Source: Landscape Juice - Buddhist Garden Treasure Sells for Over Half a Million Pounds