Style & design: Items and Icons treasures

Once you have amassed your treasures, what do you do with them? Tsar Nicholas II used to paint pictures of his jewels in an album - presumably on rainy afternoons. Re-discovered in the Kremlin archives, the Tsar's watercolours of more than 300 gem- encrusted tie-pins, cuff-links and chatelaines are published as a book, The Jewel Album of Tsar Nicholas II, pounds 43 including UK p&p, by Christie's Books, 1 Langley Lane, London SW8 1TH (0171-389 2242).

The finely carved 16th-century priest's ivory pendant crucifix (right), possibly Flemish, doubles as a sundial and as a repository for relics. A magnetic compass set in one hinged half tells the meridian, the other half can be angled in the equinoctial plane. Estimate pounds 8,000-pounds 12,000 in Christie's, London's sale of scientific works of art. Thursday, 2pm (0171-581 7611). The Swatch of 1988 (below right) has a price tag of pounds 60,000. It is one of only six known blue Royal Puffs, in hand-woven rabbit fur, and the only one for sale - at The Art of Swatch, the London shop founded by Dr Joseph Falcone, owner of the world's biggest collection. The event in the Alps, at which the promotion-only edition of 120 Royal Puffs was to have been handed out to the press, was cancelled because of summer storms. Nicholas Hayek, Swatch's senior exec, gave them instead to Swiss banker chums and loyal staff. Expensive? This year, a Kiki Picasso Swatch of 1985 changed hands for nearly pounds 1m. Art of Swatch, 11 Brompton Arcade, London SW3 (0171-589 1200).

If you'd been under the doctor in AD50, you would have been reassured by his state-of-the-art equipment. This kit of 13 instruments, from the `doctor's grave' at Stanway, near Colchester, Essex, includes scalpels, forceps, sharp and blunt retractors, needles, a probe and surgical saw. The physician was probably an ancient Briton, buried some 10 years after the Roman invasion, with food and drink to tide him over, a board-game with glass counters to stave off boredom, and the equivalent of his little black bag. You can see it until the end of February at the British Museum.

The outer surface of the iridescent, 7in-diameter glass `cage cup' (left) of about 300AD, was deeply cut away, using a tiny, hand-held grinding wheel. Only the richest Romans could afford such masterpieces - and only the richest will be able to afford the pounds 1.5m that Sotheby's expects when the cup is auctioned as the star turn in the British Rail Pension Fund's glass collection sale on Monday, 6.30pm (0171-493 8080).