Antique Gongs
A struck brass or bronze disc slung in a wooden frame, sounded with a padded striker to call a Victorian or Edwardian household to its meals.
Antique Gongs
The gong began as a struck metal disc or bowl of ancient Asian origin, and Britain took it up in the nineteenth century as a way of summoning a household. That domestic use dominates the category: "dinner" appears in 296 of 433 titles on Sellingantiques, so the gong you meet is a household object rather than a musical or ritual one.
The standard form is a brass or bronze disc hung in a turned or carved wooden frame, usually offered with its striker. Oak carries the framing in 158 titles, with walnut and mahogany a long way behind. Format splits three ways: table gongs on small bases, wall-mounted gongs on a bracket or backboard, and full-height floor standing gongs for a hall.
Dating runs from 1860 to 1930, and the thick part of it sits in the 1880s to 1910s. Victorian appears in 92 titles and Edwardian in 33. A good deal of the dating is stylistic shorthand rather than a year, with "19th Century" or a bare period name standing in for a date.
Away from the oak-and-brass mainstream there are branches worth knowing. Carved oak and Gothic revival frames make up roughly a third of the wooden-framed group. Chinese and other Asian gongs on carved hardwood stands are about one in eight. Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau and Aesthetic Movement metalwork accounts for around one in ten, and then come the novelty frames: cattle and hunting horn, antler, a horseshoe, bamboo, wrought iron, and spent shell cases described as trench art.
Where The Range Sits
Carving decides most of it. "Carved" appears in 61 titles and "gothic" in 43, and the monumental carved oak and Gothic revival frames occupy the upper reaches of the archive, while plain brass table gongs on a small base sit at the bottom. Scale pulls the same way: large and floor standing pieces run well above the tabletop entries.
Timber separates otherwise similar frames. Walnut and figured hardwood examples cluster higher in the order than the generic oak ones, and a gong sold without any frame at all sits lower again. A named design idiom lifts a piece too, whether Gothic revival, Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau or Anglo-Japanese, and those titles appear disproportionately in the upper half.
Novelty and figural subjects behave differently. Horn mounts, stag and cattle heads, an eagle, a peacock, a tiger's head, a green man and a dragon turn up from the cheapest sampled lots to the highest-priced, so the subject alone doesn't fix where a piece lands. Asian gongs hold a steady middle ground, and among them sit the least common origins in the archive: a Tibetan temple gong, a Burmese kyeezee, a Japanese bronze.
Antique Gongs Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for gongs, calculated from the Sellingantiques database of over a million retail prices indexed since 2003. This retail price guide relies exclusively on Sellingantiques data; no external sources or auction records are used, so the figures do not describe the wider market.
Oak is the framing timber by a long way on Sellingantiques, at 158 titles, with walnut and mahogany the distant alternatives.
The Antique Gongs Glossary
- Dinner gong
- The domestic form used to call a household to meals, and the term in more than two thirds of titles in this category.
- Striker
- The padded or wooden mallet that sounds the gong, often named in the title when it comes with the piece. Also called a beater or hammer.
- Framed
- The wooden or iron surround from which the disc is slung, as opposed to a gong sold loose.
- Floor standing
- A full-height framed gong on a foot, made for a hall rather than a table or sideboard.
- Gothic revival
- Nineteenth-century pointed-arch and tracery styling, the most frequently named style here and the one that clusters at the top of the range.
- Kyeezee
- A Burmese flat bell-gong, one of the named Asian forms that turns up in the archive.
Antique Gongs: Frequently Asked Questions
How many gongs sell on Sellingantiques?
Around 45 are listed a year, and 85 different dealers have handled one. That makes it a category almost nobody specialises in, but a great many dealers pass through.
The full archive runs to 433 listings, which is enough to see the pattern clearly: oak frames, brass discs, and a Victorian or Edwardian date.
What wood are the frames made from?
Oak dominates, appearing in 158 titles. Walnut and mahogany are the distant alternatives, and a single fruitwood frame shows up in the samples.
Asian gongs tend to sit on carved hardwood stands instead. Beyond timber, frames turn up in horn, antler, bamboo, wrought iron and a horseshoe.
Are table gongs different from hall gongs?
Yes, and the titles say which. Table gongs are small, on their own base, meant for a table or sideboard; 62 titles use the word.
Floor standing gongs are full height on a foot, for a hall, and 16 titles describe one. Wall hanging and wall mounted gongs, 24 titles, fix to a bracket or backboard.
Which styles come up most often?
Gothic revival is the most frequently named, in 22 titles, with pointed arches and tracery carved into oak. The recurring phrase at the top of that group is "monumental carved oak".
Arts and Crafts also appears in 22 titles, usually hand-worked oak with hammered copper or brass. Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Aesthetic Movement pieces follow behind.
Do Asian gongs turn up in this category?
They do, as a steady minority. Chinese appears in 35 titles and oriental in 17, commonly on carved hardwood stands.
Burmese, Tibetan, Japanese, Anglo-Indian and Indian examples all appear in the samples, including a Tibetan temple gong and an Indian monastery chime.
How old are most of these gongs?
The dated field spans 1860 to 1930, with 253 listings carrying a clean year. The 1900s form the biggest single bucket, then the 1890s and 1910s.
The remainder lean on "Victorian", "Edwardian" or a bare "19th Century", which are ranges rather than dates. Nothing earlier than the mid nineteenth century is supported by the archive.