AFTER 50 YEARS

Hokitika Guardian, 14 July 1933, Page 8

AFTER 50 YEARS

FAMILY.PORTRAITS FOUND. IN ENGLISH SMELTER’S SHOP. How two miniature portraits valued by a distinguished Spanish family were romantically traced alter being lost for 50 years was told in London lately by England’s only woman gold-smelter. Mrs Sonia. Waldman, 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 do Rodriekez, a well-known Spyanish 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 miniature.”

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 ali melted in time. I started to melt if, myself and have been doing so ever since.”

Many, choice pieces of jewellery have passed through Mrs Wnldnmn’s hands, inchidine many of the late Tsar’s crown jewels. Mariv pieces have Keen so beautiful that.' she has not had the heart t,n melt them. Mrs Waldman is one of the three principal woman jewel experts in Britain.